AICTE: A Regulator Which Failed Management Education

All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is a noble ideal but a flawed institution. AICTE, an advisory body established in 1945, was converted into a statutory and a regulatory body in 1987. In nearly 30 years of its statutory existence, AICTE has not been able to achieve anything of significance in pursuit of even one out of its three mandated objectives:

(1) Promotion of Quality in Technical Education
(2) Planning and Coordinated Development of Technical Education System; and
(3) Regulations and Maintenance of Norms and Standards.

AICTE has only emerged as a licensing body (legacy of license/quota raj of Industrial Development and Regulation Act carried over to the field of education) approving setting up new Technical Institution offering Technical Programme at Diploma/ Post Diploma/ Degree/ Post Graduate Degree/ Post Graduate Diploma Level in the disciplines of Engineering and Technology, Architecture, Town Planning, Management, Pharmacy, and Applied Arts and Crafts. There is a major outlier in this scheme of things which causes a major policy aberration. While most programmes seeking approvals in Management are at the Masters or postgraduate level; they are at Bachelors or undergraduate level for rest of the disciplines. Even in terms of ‘design-thinking’ engineering and technology is a ‘craft of rationality’ while management is a ‘craft of irrationality.’

AICTE has recently created a buzz around ‘out-come based learning objectives’ and National Board of Accreditation has become the noise-amplifier for the buzz. Out-Come Based Education is a concept more suited to upper-secondary-level vocational skills training and lower-tertiary-level technical education and surely is out of place in any post-graduate education. It is disheartening to note how blindly and mindlessly, this buzz is being pushed around. It is equally disheartening to see how Gurus and teachers fall on their knees before the Ministers and bureaucrats in the Ministry of Human Resource Development to catch their eyes. It is even more disturbing to see the Ministers and bureaucrats enjoying their Gurus and teachers going supine before them; for it leaves a feeling that these Ministers and bureaucrats were never educated. This is happening in a land where we take hypocritical pride in teaching our children –

“गुरुर्ब्रह्मा गुरुर्विष्णु र्गुरुर्देवो महेश्वरः। गुरु साक्षात परब्रह्मा तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः॥”

and

“गुरू गोविन्द दोऊ खड़े, काके लागूं पांय। बलिहारी गुरू अपने गोविन्द दियो बताय॥”

May be the NCERT and the MHRD should purge such content from the textbooks? May be those who did not receive such education rise on to become successful Ministers and bureaucrats and others are left behind to be subservient Gurus and teachers who would prostate and beg before the new Gods of Indian democratic society.

Keeping all operational and leadership issues like dys-functionalities and corruption aside which have become the hallmark of AICTE, major policy and design flaws like over-dependence on Engineering and Technology disciplines in staffing and leadership positions; and treatment of delivery of education as an assembly line operation have resulted into more than 11000 unviable, small-scale, multiple factories producing ‘technical manpower’ which has no ‘fitness for use’ by the industry and society. [Just for reference, USA has less than 1500]. Is it not a truly socialistic distribution of licenses and advocacy for “Small is Beautiful” (apologies to Schumacher 1973)?

The biggest victim has been “Management” discipline and it has also been the biggest challenge to AICTE itself. For “Management” discipline, AICTE is already dead because those whom it was designed to regulate have resisted it by any means necessary. Through legal intervention, “Management” discipline has blunted every attempt by AICTE to regulate the admission tests, session-dates, fee-structure, curriculum, work-loads, and duration and nearly every other process in Management programmes. AICTE can do nothing about Institutions like the ISB Hyderabad-Mohali and Great Lakes Gurgaon who do not bother to seek any approval in spite of the law which prohibits such delinquency.

It would have been far better to keep ‘Management’ discipline out of the purview of AICTE and entrust this domain to a separate and another body which could be called the “All India Council for Management Education” or better still confer similar statutory powers as were conferred on to an erstwhile advisory body AICTE to the similarly existing advisory body, “All India Board of Management Studies” which was sort of amalgamated within the AICTE.

The AICTE's leaders have, in addition, not held themselves to particularly high standards. They indulge in nepotism, curry favours from the institutions they licence and never forgo a chance to preside over the social events of their licensees conferring undeserved legitimacy on to them. “Conflict of Interest” does not belong to the lexicon of this institution. Even worse for its credibility are the allegations about a culture of bribery and misdoing by the staff of AICTE who do not take action on genuine complaints made against delinquent institutions but are happy to make life hell for others on receipt of political nudge. People making allegations may be no angels; still, the evidence deserves an impartial review.

AICTE is ineffective, unaccountable and overly political. In practice, All India Council for Technical Education is a failed institution.


__________________________________________________________




Follow this blog to remain informed about new updates.

Share the post with your friends and networks!!

You can follow the author on other sites -

• https://www.facebook.com/intheworldofideas/
• https://www.facebook.com/vichaaronkeeduniyamein/ (In HINDI)

___________