Self-financing courses violate AICTE norms

Lalit Mohan

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Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, May 21

Self-financing courses being run in various government colleges of the state are violating norms of the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). Almost all government colleges barring a few that have been started by the state government, are running technical courses such as MBA, MCA, BBA and BCA courses under the self-financing scheme.

The self-financing courses are those on which the state government is not spending anything and the colleges themselves are generating funds for running these from the fees collected from students.

As per the AICTE norms, the institutes running the technical courses should recruit faculty on a regular basis. However, none of the government colleges have recruited faculty on a regular basis for the self- financing courses. Most of the colleges have recruited teachers on contract or as guest faculty. The teachers recruited on contract are paid between Rs 15,000 and Rs 21,000 per month, whereas the guest faculty teachers are paid Rs 250 per lecture.

Sources in government colleges, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there was no provision to recruit faculty on a regular basis for self-financing courses. “We can just recruit the faculty on contract basis for the self-financing courses as there is no government policy for recruiting them on a permanent basis,” said an in charge of self-financing courses in a government college.

Sukhdev Kumar, who had earlier worked as lecturer in a self-financing course in a government college, while talking to The Tribune said the State Regulatory Commission for Higher Education in Himachal had been pulling up private universities and colleges for violating the norms of the AICTE and UGC.

However, the regulatory commission was paying no attention to those violating norms. The commission should ensure that the norms of the regulatory bodies were complied with, in government colleges also, as it was leading to exploitation of students as well as the faculty, he said.

Though government colleges are minting money through the self-financing courses, the benefits are not being passed on to the students. The sources here said the colleges had crores lying in their coffers in the form of funds collected through running the self-financing courses. However, in most of the cases, the students did not have the basic facilities. The students of the BCA under self -financing scheme in many government colleges do not have access to Internet. In some cases, even the students of the MCA do not have access to the Internet. The colleges have written many times to the Director (higher education) for getting an Internet connection, but no permissions have been granted.

In many cases, the teachers teaching the students in the self-financing courses do not meet the qualifications prescribed by the UGC or the AICTE. In the recent past, the AICTE cut the number of seats in the MCA in Government College, Una, from 60 to 30, as the norms were not being followed.

Since thousands of students from the state are doing technical courses from government colleges, the state government should ensure that quality education was provided to them said some students on condition of anonymity.