Scrap AICTE, establish single independent Regulatory Authority: FICCI

In a Paper on Regulatory Framework for Technical Education, FICCI has called for dissolution of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and setting up a single regulatory authority, independent of Government, as recommended by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC).

The role of such a regulatory authority, FICCI underlines should be limited to regulate public and private aided and unaided institutions at the initial stages with minimum prescriptions and flexible norms to begin with. Further, institutions with credible reputation over a period of 5 years should be given the autonomous status, the chamber has pointed out.

AICTE, notes FICCI, has been unable to manage multiple functions to the satisfaction of constituents, and has become virtually synonymous with granting approvals or licenses to a new applicant.Consequently, the role of quality assurance of existing institutions through issuing guidelines has taken a back seat.

FICCI has recommended that the Government, on its part, should facilitate self-financing higher education institutions to set up campuses without any entry barriers where the market forces work, as has been in case of Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad or Great Lake Institute of Management, Chennai.

It has called for autonomy to all institutions to decide on setting up of new campus, new programmes, number of programmes, number of students, fees, faculty recruitment, collaboration with international institutions, etc. based on requirement of the industry, market forces and financial considerations of the institutions by making it responsible for delivery of quality education.

FICCI has stated that the Government should ensure mandatory disclosure of ranking and other related information by the technical & higher educational institutions for the benefit of students and parents to make informed choice.
It has also suggested delinking of the quality assurance mechanism from the regulatory authority and making it independent. The Accreditation process should be such that leads to relaxation in approval processes for setting up new campuses, starting new programmes, direct empanelment in various government schemes, international collaborations, etc. for attracting genuine technical and higher education providers to invest in the process.

FICCI proposes two alternative benchmarking mechanisms drawn from the best practices of UK and USA and integrating it with mechanisms adopted by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) that is acceptable amongst the stakeholders and recognized internationally. In both the systems there is a unified accreditation process for the higher and technical education managed by the Universities and the Higher & Technical Educational Institutions themselves through Internal Quality Assurance Cells (IQAC). The role of Government is limited to being a facilitator and enabler in the accreditation process.