On 7th January 2011, AICTE, a regulator, came up with a notification which willy-nilly said that all autonomous PGDM programmes will have to follow a host of new rules, including ceding admission process to respective State governments and following a model syllabus which does not exist, amongst other things. Different courts have temporally suspended these notifications.
On January 19, 2010, the Ministry of HRD lobbed a bombshell. Citing the report of a committee of eminences, it submitted to a court of law that 44 deemed universities would be divested of their status. Other than nice homilies about protecting the interests of the students, the proposal had nothing concrete in that direction. Thankfully the court set aside the decision and now, one-and-a-half years later, nothing is clear.
Go back a little further. On 3rd June, 2009 the Minister for HRD unveiled a 100-day plan for education, which included five new bills focused on cleaning up different aspects of higher education. Three of the bills including one that is aimed at preventing malpractices in education continue to be in cold storage.
If we travel back in time further, on 2nd February, 2005 the Supreme Court of India ordered the closure of 100+ universities operating out of one room tenements. And now some State governments are passing orders similar to the ones struck down by the courts. It is another PIL waiting to happen.
From MBA to medicine, from certificate courses to foreign education, there are multiplicity of rules, confusion on jurisdiction and contradictions between different regulators. And invariably courts have become the alternative. But long-term solutions can come only from the Government. And creation of new bodies is not an answer. Neither are new bills. All it requires is tweaking of the existing policy regime with student welfare in mind. Unfortunately that does not happen at all.
In each of these policy quagmires, it is the hapless student who is the victim! Universities are recognised and de-recognised on a whim, institutional approvals are provided after the start of the session and at times colleges with no resources and poor faculty strength are given approvals. Disclosure norms are observed in breach and in most cases, educational policies are driven by courts.
This situation is bad for the students and bad for the nation. We are putting together a special story on 10 such domains in the coming issue. A separate web page is being launched for the same purpose on our website. Log on and fill in the survey that is hosted on the web page. Write to us if you come across any such instances of confusing and constraining policies either personally or from a friend or relative.
Let us together attempt to clean the system and bring the student back in focus. As a nation with over 40% of its population who are young (less than 25) we deserve a cleaner, simpler system that has student welfare as its core.