Pvt colleges harming education system: SC
June 18, 2009: The Times of India
New Delhi: In what could 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 which they described as “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. It also asked the policy makers to take note of the runaway commercialisation of education. ‘‘The protagonists of privatisation of education should realise what is happening in the country,¶ the court said.
The 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 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 Sebi.
MONITORS AT FAULT
Court says regulators disregarding criteria for giving recognition to private colleges, ‘hurting’ the system
Points to huge commercialization of education by private institutions
Says private colleges are turning ‘masked phantoms’, playing with the future of thousands of students
Institutes trying to manipulate regulators: SC
New Delhi: The SC bench comprising Justices B Sudershan Reddy and Aftab Alam was on Wednesday 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 students’ career as grounds to legalise 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 education system than good.
