After decades of rapid expansion of capacity in professional — especially engineering — education, the chickens are coming home to roost. For over a decade, the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) — the apex regulatory authority which licences and monitors education being dispensed in institutions of technical and professional education countrywide — has recklessly licensed private engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu.
Unsurprisingly many of them don’t provide adequate infrastructure and qualified faculty. All 354 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu (pop. 62 million) are required by law to be affiliated by one of the four Anna universities, which supervise engineering education in this south-eastern littoral state. These four universities also send teams to inspect affiliation applicant colleges to determine whether they have the requisite facilities to provide quality engineering education. But quite clearly both AICTE and the apex-level affiliating universities have recognised and affiliated engineering colleges in the state carelessly, and perhaps as is popularly believed, inspection teams from both supervisory institutions were routinely paid off to grant quick approvals.
This issue was highlighted last month when Anna University-Chennai (AU-C), which has 137 affiliated colleges, cracked down on the PMR Institute of Technology, Chennai (estb. 2000) for flagrant violation of quality norms, and at a February 5 press conference threatened to disaffiliate the college. An AU-C spokesperson said that an inspection team sent to the college last December reported that a maths teacher from a school owned by the college management, and an engineer working in a software company had posed as college faculty.
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The AU-C inspection team’s latest report, following reports of two earlier commissions sent to inspect PMRIT in April and August last year, which found that the college did not meet minimum standards of infrastructure, and lacked quality teaching faculty, has proved to be the last straw. “Repeated admonitions by the university urging the college to improve its infrastructure and teaching standards have been of no avail. Moreover faculty impersonation is an unforgivable crime in the teaching profession and should be dealt with severely,” thundered Dr. Mannar Jawahar, vice-chancellor, Anna University. However thus far (February 27), the university far from disaffiliating PMRIT, hasn’t even issued the college a show-cause notice.
Meanwhile following the February 5 press conference, 400 students enrolled in PMRIT boycotted classes for three days and on Feb 11, staged a protest at the Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE) campus together with 50 parents, demanding immediate transfer to other colleges. They made power point presentations highlighting abysmal laboratory and toilet facilities, and played mobile phone recordings of student abuse by college officials.
However in a volte face from his tough talk to the media, vice-chancellor Jawahar advised students to disperse and return to PMRIT, saying that transfer to other colleges will not be considered until a five-member committee comprising two syndicate members and three university professors re-inspects the college. In the interim, the PMRIT college management met with DoTE and university authorities and submitted a written undertaking that infrastructure facilities will be upgraded and teacher vacancies filled before February 25.
PMRIT students, who have paid tuition fees averaging Rs.90,000 in advance, have no faith in the college management’s reassurances, as similar statements of intent in the past have not yielded any result. “We don’t understand on what basis AICTE granted approval and how Anna University affiliated the college and included it in its single window counselling programme,” says a PMRIT computer science student.
Repeated short-changing of full-fee paying students of privately-promoted self-financing colleges, duly recognised by AICTE and affiliated by the four government-run Anna universities, has confirmed the public’s worst fears about the integrity of AICTE and Anna University inspectors and regulators. “In PMRIT’s case AICTE and Anna University should have ascertained that the college was fully equipped to provide acceptable quality technical education. Corrupt regulatory officials are bringing disrepute to the academic profession,” says V.C. Kulandaiswamy, former vice-chancellor of IGNOU, Anna and Madurai Kamaraj universities.
Clearly, a thorough review and overhaul of the accreditation and affiliation processes of AICTE and the four Anna universities, is overdue to save the reputation of Tamil Nadu’s institutions of technical education.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)