post supreme court and after

saving the PGDM schools

I have been trying to bring together all the top PGDM schools on same wavelength to keep the focus alive even after the SC judgement. From what I can see and observe while the PGDM schools keep fighting among themselves, the government has marshaled its forces well to support its ill conceived attempt to ensure quality in business education. My strong conviction that unless the schools themselves are clear about which way they want to move and are able to convince the government, nothing much is going to happen with or without SC support. This is the reason why I was pushing the international accreditation option hard through SEAA Trust which created so that at least a few dozen schools would move up the quality ladder to match with the best in the world and in the process cause a trickle down effect on quality and also help build a stronger case for allowing the special status of PGDM schools to continue.

Without freedom to decide on curriculum, pedagogy, faculty recruitment, admissions and of course on fee, you cant build world class campuses in the country. To say that the private university model of the US can be reciprocated in India is a false premise as neither there is any major corporate philanthropic support nor is there freedom to charge the kind of fee that would offset the cost of providing a world class MBA.

I realise that the problem is more fundamental. There is as yet any reliable, transparent data or for that matter there is any intention at all in the industry about becoming transparent themselves which makes the job of AICTE type of regulator more easy. No one is serious! NEUPA study will be another multicrore effort like that of the national knowledge commission and a source of harassment for everyone until it is completed and its report like all other research reports prior to it and also the reports of the various committees would be concigned to the dustbin of political expediency and it would be business as usual.

My feeling is that we in the community as usual are training our guns in the wrong direction. The real fight is about attitudes and this needs to change. After all we need high quality higher education institutions to run our businesses, governments and institutions of future and we cannot afford to ignore this. We need to build trust about educational institutions and stop exploitation of the parents and students by ever smarter education service providers and only then we would be able to fight AICTE more meaningfully.