AICTE takes no action against erring institutes: Students

Students have a grouse. Many of them allege that whenever they have complained against unethical practices adopted by postgraduate diploma in management (PGDM) institutes to the All-India Council For Technical Education (AICTE), they have only received assurance that action will be taken. However, their issues have remained unresolved.

“According to AICTE rules, if a student wants to withdraw from a PGDM college before the beginning of a session, the institute should refund the whole amount paid as fee but my institute didn’t do it. I emailed my complaint to AICTE but didn’t get any response,” says a student requesting anonymity.

Another student who has complained to the AICTE is from the TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI). He says, “I wrote to the AICTE that TAPMI has not refunded one full year’s fee because I failed to score 4.4 CGPA in the first term. AICTE wrote a letter to TAPMI asking the institute to return my money in August last year, but I haven’t got it till now.”

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When HT Education wrote to Anil Sahasrabudhe, AICTE chairman, he forwarded the mail to AICTE official SK Patnaik who was not available for comments. However, SS Mantha, former AICTE director, when contacted, said such complaints were common in AICTE when he was heading the council till January 2015. “These complaints are not new. In fact, from 2002 to 2006, AICTE stopped granting approvals to PGDM institutes for these reasons. They have even violated the Supreme Court order. SC has asked all the institutes to declare the admission process and fee structure on their website but some institutes are showing something on their website and practising something else,” says Mantha. “Any institute can get autonomous status either by the University Grants Commission or by a committee set up for that purpose. They can’t be called autonomous institutes without following the due procedure to become autonomous,” he adds.