Date:15/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/15/stories/2008121559081400.htm

National

Parliamentary panel pulls up AICTE

Special Correspondent

“It failed to check commercialisation of education”

A majority of technical institutes are concentrated in peninsular India
“Council should consolidate its core competence and restructure organisation”

NEW DELHI: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development has pulled up the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) for its inability to check commercialisation of education and regulate technical education in the country.

In its report on the functioning of the AICTE — tabled in the Lok Sabha on Friday — the committee faulted the council for trying to expand its mandate when it had been unable to fulfil the task assigned to it in the first place.

As a case in point, the committee cited the lopsided development of technical education in the country with a majority of institutes concentrated in peninsular India. Stating that the coordinated development of technical education in the country at all levels was an important function assigned to the council, the committee noted with concern that the “concentration of institutions in specific regions is the testimony of extent of regional imbalance.”

Further, it added: “The very objective of proper planning and coordinated development of the technical education system throughout the country in the backdrop of evolving AICTE from an advisory body to a statutory body seems to have been defeated.”

On commercialisation of education, the committee found that the fee committees and admission committees — set up by State governments as per the Supreme Court’s directions to prescribe fees to be charged by technical institutions and oversee the admission process — had been unable to address the problem.

Uniform fee structure

Asserting that the education sector should be protected from commercialisation, the committee has called for exploring the possibility of a uniform fee structure commensurate with the infrastructure and other facilities available in the institutions.

As for the AICTE’s contention that emerging technical programmes like fashion technology, hospitality related fields, media technology, nano-technology, nuclear sciences and space technology should be brought under the AICTE Act, the committee has questioned the council’s ability to take on the additional task given that it had not satisfactorily managed the programmes presently under its purview. In turn, the committee said the council should consolidate its core competence, revamp its infrastructure, and restructure the organisation keeping in view the altered realities prior to enlarging its mandate to cover new disciplines.

Likewise, the committee criticised the AICTE for not undertaking a survey of the state of technical education. “The committee was constrained to note that the AICTE till date has failed to undertake any survey whatsoever in any field of technical education leaving thereby the crucial mandate of making forecasts about the needed growth and development in technical education unattended so far.”