More B-schools closing than new ones
opening
Hemali Chhapia TNN
Mumbai:The dawn of the third millennium marked the golden age of professional
education in India. Hundreds of new institutes came up adding thousands of
seats. An equal number queued up to grab them.
A decade on, the picture is one of stark contrast in
technical professional colleges: this year more B-schools applied for closure
than those that took wing. This academic year, 94 management colleges have
sought consent to shut down. In the case of engineering colleges, many in the
southern states, which experienced the highest growth in the professional
education space, are up for sale. Many more colleges have trimmed programmes,
branches of engineering or streams in the management course.
On the academic front, the Master of Business
Administration programme was once supreme, attracting not only those interested
in business but also those who wanted to master the tools of management. Today the
overall growth of MBA education is negative in the books of the All India
Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Between 2011 and 2013, the AICTE
received 231 applications from management colleges wanting to shut down. The
AICTE has okayed about 80 of them. ‘Professional edu must be in line
with industry’
Mumbai: Professional education in India is going through a rough patch. Like
the MBA programme, a similar story haunts the Master of Computer Application
(MCA) course—while 84 colleges stopped offering the programme last year, only
27 started it. For students who choose not to apply to an MCA college, the
decision is a nobrainer: with many more engineering seats available now, an
undergraduate would rather earn a BTech degree followed by a two-year master’s
than enrol for a bachelor’s in computer application and back it up with a
three-year MCA that would also eat up six years.
The AICTE has decided to allow colleges to offer a
five-year dual degree programme and permit graduates of science, BSc (computer
science) and BSc (information technology) to jump to the second year of the MCA
course. Yet, the small positive growth in the sector is from the engineering
colleges where new institutes are coming up faster than closures taking place,
largely in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Rajasthan.
S S Mantha, AICTE chairman, said: “This is a critical
phase for the professional education sector. Professional education must be in
line with industry. If you don’t offer placements, students are not going to
come. Colleges in remote India and institutes of poor quality are not getting
students. There is just one key to attracting students: institutes need to
be top-of-the-line. There is no payoff in running a bad college.” But things
seem to be looking up. “As the economy revives, we will see a larger pool of
applications from colleges wanting to start. We have received close to 120
applications from B-schools for the next academic year,” he said.
Joining a professional college was once the pinnacle of
an Indian student’s career. Aspirants far outnumbered the seats. But often,
they were put off by one or more of these three reasons: poor quality of
teaching, lack of adequate faculty or no job offer at the end. “MBA as a
programme has to be relooked at in many colleges. The AICTE must set up quality
control cells,” said an IIM director.
Times of India, Mumbai edition Date 1 July 2013
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