General Management @ Knowledge Zone



The Great Tuition Robbery

by Prof. P. V. Ramana *

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Part - V

It is sad that in Indian Institutions, Dean and Faculty groups are almost never given this role of authority and control on the academic destiny of the Institution itself! Here I am talking about IIM the Institution as opposed to IIM the Society. If the Government in a single action of the pen can give what amounts to FREE EDUCATION to all the students, what price motivation of the students to excel and what price the motivation of the Faculty to teach? What MHRD is saying is that, "The Faculty has no role! The best come to IIM, and hence IIMs are the best. We want to reduce tuition so that even a higher proportion of the very best will come to IIMs and hence IIMs will be even better Institutions!" What a rot! What are the functionaries in the MHRD doing? Are they not also a product of the elite corps of the IAS? Will free and Universal IAS coaching produce a better cadre of governance in the Indian State?

The IIM Fee Cut is a direct attack on the role and relevance of the faculty, which seems to be totally missed. This ought to be resisted by a mass resignation or at least by a mass leave as a Protest Action. If the Government thinks of sacking the faculty, they will only be benefited as the next 10 Institutes are only too willing to pay double the salary and snap them up!

The Vice of Excessive Control

It is well written that Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The excessive desire to control is being disguised under specious arguments about ratio of the fee to per capita income, etc. The original error occurred when the UGC model was adopted wholesale by our government, whereas a better model was there for all to see in the self-regulated competitive and merit driven systems prevailing in the United States, Japan, etc. Excessive control in itself is a vice which puts the government in opposition to the very institutions it seeks to promote. The net effects of the UGC system as seen now are: -

  • A great majority of our teaching institutions are only glorified coaching classes, where the teaching is to merely prepare for an examination and not to give an education.

  • The spirit of original enquiry and research is largely absent from many institutions.

  • Colleges have no right of deciding what they want to teach, and students have no desire to learn what is needed beyond the a set of 100 or so questions which are regularly expected in the public examinations.

  • Curricula, syllabi and teaching methods are so outdated that Commercial coaching classes do a better job of "teaching" than the publicly supported colleges.

  • UGC controls and seeks to enhance it's control by fixing the degrees, salary scales of teachers, grants for departments, selection of the top officers of every university, funds for capital expenditure, etc.

  • It is submitted that the system has created uniformity in mediocrity by asking institutions to achieve minimum standards and not encouraging or even thinking about performance not prescribed.

  • Dependence on University grants has robbed the Universities in India from the capacity to change, to grow and be places where 'truth is pursued' and independence of thought and action is appreciated. This loss in retrospect is such a great loss that the entire period of the supremacy of the UGC will be recorded as a black period in the history of Indian education. The greatness of Universities and institutions of higher learning is judged from the number of original inventions, great ideas, great teachers, universally adopted theories, advancement of science, patents, innovation, technological achievement, etc. In spite of the very high numbers of engineers and scientists, where are the real people to stand up and be counted? Truly independent universities have the potential to be great. Where the government has largely kept away so far, such as in the IIMs, and IITs the institutes have come into world reckoning.

  • The government is seeking to exercise control now of such a measure that the chances of losing what they have achieved is real and dangerously so.

  • It is well known that the IIM's have no desire to become Universities, or even to become Deemed Universities, only and only because such a step would bring them under UGC control, which is considered retrograde by them. Now the government is threatening them with worse!

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* Contributed by: -
Prof. P. V. Ramana; BE (Hons) Elec. Engg. from Andhra University, Waltair, India; MBA (Accounting & Finance) from Washington State University, USA; Prof. Engr. (Thermal Power), USA (equiv. to a Doctoral qualification); Receiver of Life Time Achievement award in 2003 for service to Management Education given by World HRD Congress, Boston, USA; Dr. P. N. Singh Foundation has instituted the "Prof. P. V. Ramana" for Corporate Governance; he has also founded ITM in 1991.