The business called Education...

ORDERED TO SHUT tech colleges move their business

Engg, MBA Institutes Among Those Found To Have Dubious Standards

Hemali Chhapia & Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Mumbai: The cat-and-mouse game has begun. Technical institutions ordered to shut shop by Bombay High Court owing to shoddy teaching standards, have begun to look for ways to skirt a crackdown. Many of them have moved out from the address registered with the state and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to escape detection.
Dingy rooms, classes running out of basements, garages and residences, the scene in these colleges is a repeat of Chattisgarh where private institutions had proliferated without sanction. A day after Bombay HC directed the closure of 14 of these unrecognised institutions and six others which have academic tieups with foreign universities, TOI visited some of them — only to find that they had packed their bags and left.
The trip to Hindustan Institute of Technology and Management at Borivali (east) revealed the college had shifted out to a new locality. The institute had moved to an address on S V Road in Borivali where they were located on the second floor of a shopping centre; about 50 students had enrolled for MBA and MCA courses in the institute, unaware of the recent order.
Alok Jha, chairman of the institute, said his institute was anyway only a “study centre’’ of the Sikkim-Manipal University and he was following the rules laid down by the Distance Education Council (DEC). “How many bodies do we have to seek permission from? The DEC states that their rules do not have a geographical jurisdiction,’’ Jha defended.
However, Jha also claimed that he had stopped all fresh admissions since July 2007 when he was served a notice by the state government to seek the AICTE’s permission.
Similarly, two rooms and a laboratory on the second floor of a shabby building in Dadar is all that St John’s Paramedical College can offer. Jostling for space along with a host of coaching classes, the college had hung a board at the entrance of the building which said that it offered international education, medical lab technology, clinical research, and courses in ECG, X-Ray, CT Scan and MRI. The door was locked.
A peon at the gate said few students came to the institute. P F John, who runs it, said it was a private vocational training course, not affiliated to a university. “I am closing it down because it is not financially viable to run the course any longer,’’ said John.
According to him, the college stopped admitting fresh applicants since June 2007. Those who were enrolled earlier completed their training in December. “There’s an acute shortage of paramedics and there was a great demand for our students,’’ said John. However, he admitted that some of the courses that were mentioned on the board at the entrance, such as clinical research, were never part of the curriculum.
Similar situations exist in many of the other institutes too. A paper stuck on the door of a room on the ground floor of a shabby, commercial building at Andheri said ‘Sai College’ had shifted to Mira Road. The college, affiliated to the Madhya Pradesh Open University (or at least that’s what its president Rakesh Kumar claims), offers BA and BCom courses. “We have been told to get the necessary permissions from Mantralaya. We have applied for recognition,’’ said Kumar.
Another such institute — similarly named Sai College — runs from a basement in Thane. The Global Institute of Management Science has a small bungalow in Kalina for its campus. These are colleges clearly unlike any management or engineering campus that a student dreams of. But given the growing demand for professional courses, said a technical education official, they find takers among gullible students who can’t crack tough entrance exams.
It was a PIL filed by activist Dinesh Kamath which pointed out that private universities and educational institutions, which were functioning without affiliation or AICTE recognition, were misguiding students; it prompted the state to swing into action. The high court has taken note of 112 such bogus institutions functioning across Maharashtra and directed the government to take action against them.
The state government constituted a seven-member committee, which included four former vice-chancellors, to scrutinise all the 112 institutions. All these colleges were given a chance to present their side of the story and plug deficiencies like lack of infrastructure or shortage of faculty. While many institutions have complied with proposed standards, those that have not have been asked to shut down.
TO BE SEALED
IMET, Malad Link Road, Malad (west) Praxis Business School, Kalina, Santa Cruz Industrial Research Institute, Pune RSP Management Institute, Kothrud, Pune Hindustan Institute of Technology, S V Road, Borivli Sai College, near Navrang Cinema, Andheri Swastik College, Dadar Academy of Pharmaceutical Management, Kalina, Mumbai Hospitality Training Institute, Matunga, Mumbai St John’s Paramedical College, SB Marg, Dadar (west) Sai College, Thane (west) Global Institute of Mgmt Science, Santa Cruz (E) ITM Institute of Financial Markets, Vashi, Navi Mumbai

THE HEAT IS ON: Lack of regulatory approvals has landed numerous institutions like these in trouble