Private B-schools unhappy with guidelines of regulator AICTE

They have expressed fears that state governments, who have been made a major player in the admission process, do not have the necessary "wherewithal" to conduct the tests.
Announcing partial modification to admission guidelines last Friday, AICTE had given institutes the option of exercising their preference for selecting students through CAT or MAT or through examination conducted by respective state governments.

The preferences would have to be given to the competent authority of the state governments.

The revised norms were issued in the backdrop of the regulator receiving 80,000 complaints on a range of alleged irregularities being committed by some of the institutions.

The Education Promotion Society for India (EPSI) and the Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) have held that the modifications are "negligible" and do not address the wider concerns of management institutes.

Selection of students to post-graduate diploma in management (PGDM) programme is not just based on past academic record or percentile scored in CAT or MAT, but is finalised based on managerial aptitude and potential of the prospective students done through rigorous process of group discussion and personal interview.

"Will states have the capacity to carry this out in time," questioned president of EPSI G Viswanathan.

"It seems AICTE probably has not thought of this aspect and hence is herding all PGDM institutions with State University affiliated MBA programme," he said.

The revised guidelines issued in December last year has also vested state governments the right to fix fees approved by the pay fixation committee along with conducting the tests for MBA programmes besides CAT and MAT.

Private B-schools have objected to this as well as AICTE's decision to start admission after March 31 of the academic year.

Writ petitions have been filed against the revised norms in different states.
Of the 3,800 B-schools registered with AICTE, nearly 500 run PGDM courses.
The management bodies have alleged that the changes were "a mere sham and refelected AICTE's apathy to quality".

"The rigid attitude towards autonomous PGDM institutions is only getting corroborated by its ill-thought out hastily issued series of notifications which only confound confusion among students and institutes," they alleged.