Proffessional education and foreign Universities

End This Licence Raj


The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) must be patting itself on the back for a job well done, with the Delhi High Court upholding its order to stop the Indian operations of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute of the US. But the AICTE would do well to spare a thought for the 10,500 students who are enrolled for the CFA course, which costs almost Rs 1 lakh over three years and is considered to be a premier qualification for those who want to become fund managers or equity researchers. Some of these students may well have the means to appear for the CFA exams abroad, but should the AICTE impose such high costs on those who merely seek a quality education?

The longer-term question is the larger one: should the licence raj be allowed to continue in professional education, at a time when the pervasive shortage of qualified people and the lack of quality institutions to provide professional education have reached crisis point? The AICTE’s case for being the controller of quality in the field of professional education is tenuous because of its track record; the plain fact is that it has not covered itself in glory in this regard and is widely perceived to have neither the expertise nor the wherewithal to ensure the quality of professional education in the country, in the numbers required. If proof were needed for this assertion, one has to merely look at the quality of education churned out by a majority of the professional institutes which have been duly approved by the council.
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