Setbacks and successes

Higher education

In Karnataka, six deemed universities were deemed to be unfit for the ‘deemed’ status, while four more from the state were given three years to get their act together. The de-recognition has been stayed on a petition in the Supreme Court.

In other ways, 2010 appears to have picked up where 2009 left off. While last year saw the AICTE top brass, including the chairman and executive secretary getting suspended on charges of bribery, in the year ending, it was the turn of the Medical Council of India (MCI). Council chairman Ketan Desai was arrested by the CBI on charges of accepting a bribe of nearly Rs two crore for approving a medical college. Not only was Desai eventually suspended, but MCI itself was overturned and a new, hand-picked Board of Governors was instilled to clean-up the mess.

Closer home, the Common Entrance Test (CET) witnessed some commotion due to the new processes put in place following the aforementioned AICTE clean-up. A new system of granting approvals met with several glitches, the result being that several colleges did not receive approval even when CET commenced.

The non-approval of the consensual agreement by the Supreme Court this year has also led to the Rajiv Gandhi University rejecting the admissions of some students. The issue is yet to be resolved.

On the other hand, the de-centralization of CET counselling, first undertaken in 2009, was further extended, meeting with notable success in both Mangalore and Davangere.
For the upcoming year, more de-centralization is in the offing with Shimoga and Belgaum to be added to the list of counselling centres.