Harming Education System
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Private Professional Colleges Harming Education System: SC
In what can further crank up the pressure for cleansing the education system, the Supreme Court on Wednesday criticized education regulators for the casual manner of giving recognition to private professional colleges, calling them "masked phantoms".
The court charged the regulators with disregarding the criteria laid down for the recognition, saying that it was hurting the higher education system while asking the policy makers to take note of the runaway commercialisation of education. It said: ``The protagonists of privatisation of education should realise what is happening in the country.''
The stinging observation coincided with the outrage triggered by the TOI-Times Now expose of the capitation fee scam in private medical colleges, as well as the HRD ministry's decision to check the rampant irregularities in accrediting private institutions. The regulators - the University Grants Commission, Medical Council of India, All India Council of Technical Education and Dental Council of India - are all under the scanner, amid signs that the government may be veering towards scrapping them to bring in a fresh regulator patterned after the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
The bench comprising Justices B Sudershan Reddy and Aftab Alam was concerned about the practice of private institutions enrolling thousands of students even before they get the mandatory recognition. The plight of these students is then invoked, it said, to wangle recognition from regulators who are not keen to apply the standards laid down in the book.
The private institutions cite the students' career as grounds to legalise the admissions they had done unauthorizedly, it said.
The bench then went on to call, echoing the remark made by the court in a similar case, the institutions - "masked phantoms" - which do more harm to the education system than good.
It also sounded a loud warning against the current policy premium on privatization, pointing to the pitfalls involved. Privatization of education was all right, but this sort of blatant violation of statutory requirements needed for starting a professional college by private parties amounted to playing with the future of thousands of students, it said.
The observation came during the hearing of a petition of a private institution, S V N College of Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, challenging a high court order which had restrained it from admitting students without following the criteria. While the SC bench agreed to issue notice to the Madhya Pradesh government, it concurred with the HC's concern over the perils of unregulated privatization of education sector. "We fully share the anguish of the HC," Justices Reddy and Alam said as they refused to stay the HC order.
They did not relent when counsel for S V N College, a self-financed institute, senior advocate R Venkataramani and advocate Jasbir Malik, argued that it had the requisite recognition of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The bench said: ``Our observation that regulatory bodies are casually granting recognition applied to the NCTE as well.''
For the regulators, the criticism could not have come at a worse time. They have been under intense attack, and there are indications to suggest that the recommendation of the Yashpal Committee for doing away with UGC, MCI and the Dental Council of India may find favour with the government.
Another regulator, the AICTE, which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, is under scrutiny too.
The HC had referred to a 1986 judgment of the apex court emphasising the need for proper inspection of the private institutes before grant of recognition on the grounds that ``private institutions unauthorizedly established were invariably ill-housed, ill-staffed and ill-equipped'' and deprecated the HCs which allowed such institutes to admit students.
.
Private Professional Colleges Harming Education System: SC
In what can further crank up the pressure for cleansing the education system, the Supreme Court on Wednesday criticized education regulators for the casual manner of giving recognition to private professional colleges, calling them "masked phantoms".
The court charged the regulators with disregarding the criteria laid down for the recognition, saying that it was hurting the higher education system while asking the policy makers to take note of the runaway commercialisation of education. It said: ``The protagonists of privatisation of education should realise what is happening in the country.''
The stinging observation coincided with the outrage triggered by the TOI-Times Now expose of the capitation fee scam in private medical colleges, as well as the HRD ministry's decision to check the rampant irregularities in accrediting private institutions. The regulators - the University Grants Commission, Medical Council of India, All India Council of Technical Education and Dental Council of India - are all under the scanner, amid signs that the government may be veering towards scrapping them to bring in a fresh regulator patterned after the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
The bench comprising Justices B Sudershan Reddy and Aftab Alam was concerned about the practice of private institutions enrolling thousands of students even before they get the mandatory recognition. The plight of these students is then invoked, it said, to wangle recognition from regulators who are not keen to apply the standards laid down in the book.
The private institutions cite the students' career as grounds to legalise the admissions they had done unauthorizedly, it said.
The bench then went on to call, echoing the remark made by the court in a similar case, the institutions - "masked phantoms" - which do more harm to the education system than good.
It also sounded a loud warning against the current policy premium on privatization, pointing to the pitfalls involved. Privatization of education was all right, but this sort of blatant violation of statutory requirements needed for starting a professional college by private parties amounted to playing with the future of thousands of students, it said.
The observation came during the hearing of a petition of a private institution, S V N College of Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, challenging a high court order which had restrained it from admitting students without following the criteria. While the SC bench agreed to issue notice to the Madhya Pradesh government, it concurred with the HC's concern over the perils of unregulated privatization of education sector. "We fully share the anguish of the HC," Justices Reddy and Alam said as they refused to stay the HC order.
They did not relent when counsel for S V N College, a self-financed institute, senior advocate R Venkataramani and advocate Jasbir Malik, argued that it had the requisite recognition of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The bench said: ``Our observation that regulatory bodies are casually granting recognition applied to the NCTE as well.''
For the regulators, the criticism could not have come at a worse time. They have been under intense attack, and there are indications to suggest that the recommendation of the Yashpal Committee for doing away with UGC, MCI and the Dental Council of India may find favour with the government.
Another regulator, the AICTE, which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, is under scrutiny too.
The HC had referred to a 1986 judgment of the apex court emphasising the need for proper inspection of the private institutes before grant of recognition on the grounds that ``private institutions unauthorizedly established were invariably ill-housed, ill-staffed and ill-equipped'' and deprecated the HCs which allowed such institutes to admit students.
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