With the government planning to give more freedom to top business schools, India’s top private institutes like XLRI (Jamshedpur) and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (Mumbai) might soon get more hold in admission process. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is likely to hold a meeting later this month to discuss on the autonomy the institutions.
AICTE’S STATEMENT
“The business schools will be graded A, B and C after assessing them on a set of criteria, including leadership, teaching, learning, graduation outcomes, research, executive education, consulting and learning programmes, accreditation, and internationalisation and outreach programmes.”
“A PGDM institute that gets ‘A’ grading might be given the utmost autonomy. As it is, admissions to a number of institutes are through CAT (the common admission test conducted by the IIMs). If an institute gets A grade, it might be allowed to hold its own examination for all seats or for certain percentage of seats. Those graded B may get autonomy in admission to a fewer number of seats,” an AICTE official said in a recent media statement.
TIRING BATTLE FOR AUTONOMY
The PGDM institutions in Delhi have been battling for autonomy since 2010. There are over 350 self-financed B-schools across the state that offer postgraduate diplomas in management (PGDM) who have been arguing that the council cannot encroach into their autonomy since many of them are already functioning as self-financing institutes for five decades.
The Supreme Court had in 2011 stayed the AICTE’s notification that directs B-schools to withdraw their call for autonomy relating to admission, fixing fees, curriculum, and examinations matters, in favour of the institutions
In the same year, the Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI) and Association of Indian Management Schools, favouring the institutes, had appealed to the Supreme Court through writ petition, hence challenging the AICTE’s notification
