Quality B-School to get Autonomy comparable to IIM’s

“While the industry has moved to Industry 4.0, Management Education needs to catch up as education 4.0.” – Dr.Anil Sahasrabudhe said while speaking at the Conference on Indian National Management Education: Time to Transform organised by XIME, Bangalore. This was also the occasion of 10th anniversary of formation of Association of BRICS Business Schools promoted by Prof. J. Philip, Chairman, XIME.

Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe spoke extensively on the policy of graded autonomy. Institutions on qualifying as Tier I in AICTE will be given the freedom, comparable to that enjoyed by the IIMs, to make decisions regarding new programs, fees, incubation, foreign faculty, curriculum, teaching pattern, etc. While some institutions desire autonomy, a lot of other colleges avoid it due to reasons like increase in workload, non-co-operation by the affiliation university and the fear of job losses. According to Dr. Sahasrabudhe, there are two ways to address this, one way being thrusting autonomy after two cycles of accreditation and the second being mentorship programs. These mentorship programs would focus on mentoring faculty and institutions to share knowledge and promote experiential learning. Dr. Saharabudhe also highlighted certain new provisions such as granting accreditation to institutions for six and three years subject to fulfilment of certain criterion. This will substantially reduce the filing requirements.

The Indian Management education scenario is highly segmented. One one had there are the IIMs and the institutions such as XLRI and XIME that have 100% admissions on account of their excellence, while on the other hand number of institutions find it difficult to fill their quota of seats. He highlighted the urgent need for colleges to be relevant or face the consequence of extinction. This is germane to all spheres ranging from industries, education institutions, faculty and students. The slogan of the government is ‘Access and Equity ‘. But Dr. Sahasrabudhe pointed out how quality must be emphasized as well. Not doing so has led to the shutting down of a number of institutions and if the institutions do not take up necessary corrective actions there may be more. He mentioned about several steps taken up by AICTE to improve the quality of Management education in the country. These include a new model curriculum which can be adapted by the colleges to suit their requirements, ‘Swayam’, an online educational platform by the AICTE which has more than 1800 courses, and a number of other facilities provided by AICTE for training and upgrading the skills of teachers in Management Institutions. While replying to a question, he welcomed industry activism in bringing management education up to date with the needs of the Industry.
The session began with opening remarks from Prof. Philips, Chairman, XIME, Bangalore. He pointed out that AICTE is responsible for 70% of the manpower supplied to various industries through the engineering colleges, pharmacy, technology, research, management studies, architecture institutes under his jurisdiction. He also highlighted the demand of the Management Institutions that AICTE recognize accreditation from professional bodies such as ACBSP and not limit only to NBA. The session was concluded with a vote of thanks by the Provost Anantharaman.