Private B-schools set to take on govt

Several top private B-schools are petitioning High Courts and the government in a concerted battle against a controversial new rule by India's apex technical education regulator that the institutions argue could kill management education quality.

Several top private B-schools are petitioning High Courts and the government in a concerted battle against a controversial new rule by India's apex technical education regulator that the institutions argue could kill management education quality.

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The institutions – including the prestigious Xavier Labour Research Institute in Jamshedpur, SP Jain in Mumbai, Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) and the Management Development Institute among others – met here today to finalise their opposition strategy.

The B-schools are opposing a December 28, 2010 notification by the All India Council for Technical Education which prevents them from conducting their own admission tests for the coveted post-graduate diploma in management programmes.

The notification critically also bars individual institutions from conducting their own group discussions (GD) and personal interviews (PI) – instead stipulating that state governments are to conduct GDs and PIs, the second layer of the selection process adopted by B-schools.

The AICTE rule, reported first by HT on December 30, is aimed at reducing the number of admission tests students need to take, minimize the travel students need to undertake to multiple institutions for GDs and PIs, and to try and eliminate admissions malpractices.

But the B-schools are arguing that the notification will kill their autonomy in admissions, and destroy quality in the good private B-schools. "This will kill the growth of management education in India, taking us back 20 years at a time when we were poised to go global," BIMTECH Director H Chaturvedi told HT.

The protesting institutions have also won the support of former Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad Director Bakul Dholakia, who challenged former human resource development minister Arjun Singh's alleged attempts at encroaching the IIM's autonomy.

"The AICTE notification may be aimed at preventing malpractices by the worst private B-schools. But instead of pulling them up, it will bring down the quality of the good private B-schools," Dholakia told HT.