Who plays at what level?

But it’s disappointing to see what his ministry is doing. These new guidelines will take management education back to the year 1992 when India introduced postgraduate diploma in management (PGDM) programmes. The success of Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) was responsible for this. In the age of liberalisation, we seem to be going backward. There can’t be a diktat on admissions and fees and curricula. Our view is that AICTE has not followed proper procedure in drafting these guidelines. It has not consulted the stakeholders before framing the guidelines. We have proof that these notifications were not properly drafted. When we raised this point with the AICTE chairman, he did not respond. Now we will produce the proof in the court.

Delegating admissions to the state governments, which will certainly find this idea attractive, will breed corruption. We already have so much corruption at the national level. If you want to reform a sector you look at how to make it better, not worse. AICTE is changing the guidelines and norms every week. You can speak to engineering colleges for which AICTE has changed the norms three times in the last three years.

I will explain it like this. If an IIM is set up in places like Ranchi or Rohtak, and operates without faculty members, no one questions that. But had it been one among us, we would have been issued a warning letter about penalties. This is a ridiculous way of functioning. If you look at the quality of the MBA that the universities and their affiliated colleges in our country offer, you will be surprised by the lack of infrastructure. But the University Grants Commission (UGC) is not monitoring them. Many of them are ill-run. No one bothers to review B-schools at universities where students do not even find a decent job.

(From the Q&A: H Chaturvedi, Birla Institute of Management and Technology)