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18. For those institutes that are 5 years old, there should be separate placement cell headed by a separate full-time highly-experienced and senior faculty member or placement advisor / consultant.

19. Does institute or university campus has strong networked Alumni Association with an office?

Placement, Qualilty & the Fee Issues

20. While placements are important, it is avoidable both for institutes and students to give it too much importance and instead focus on high quality of education and character building. This can be done at affordable and reasonable costs in India (as suggested in previous paragraphs), and especially when education is noble task of nation building and non-profit work. Central Government must act on this issue and put a check.

If we test on these parameters, the real output and its quality, unnecessary infrastructure, etc., the huge fee increase by IIMs recently is a disservice to the nation, as it is unjustified to absorb their inefficiencies and mediocre quality costs by merely arguing that students get good pay-packages after the course.

This means IIMs are working as commission and placement agents in the country taking their cut for awarding a diploma and from future projected earnings of students. Sounds like stock market derivatives and PEG ratios used by investors? It is stunning. Were they set-up for this purpose? There is absolutely no logic and validity in spending Rs. 8 Lakhs per student on simple management education (much simpler than Engineering courses) in India where per capita income is just Rs. 30,000 per year.

Consumers should understand that taking loan is merely a vehicle to spend in advance, but it does not diminish the real cost of product or service in economy and has inflationary effect. Same way, a scholarship is merely a subsidy. The manner in which these self-claiming premier institutes create fallacy in the country is deplorable. Such unjustified huge fees (at least for resident Indians) create a ripple effect and all kinds of sub-standard institutes would also raise their fees too. It is a serious concern for national economy. These apex institutes of India under government sector were supposed to act responsibly and with restraint. Just compare their fees with affiliated colleges in states where fee is just Rs. 35,000/. So deliberately the government has created elite class in education. It is a kind of anti-national act by propping up a few institutes and killing quality of majority of institutes in India. It is discriminatory act by national government and unconstitutional.

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* Contributed by -
Prof. R. K. Gupta,
B.E. (Honors), MBA FIE FIMA,
Senior Consultant & Professor of Management at Jodhpur,
Director, Sobhagya Consultancy & Marketing Services, India.