Ishan Institute of Management & Technology sits among several private colleges in this growing New Delhi suburb, a campus of concrete buildings, expansive lawns and fresh-faced students hailing from places such as Kota in Rajasthan and Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
Founded in 1995 for 60 students, Ishan has since grown 10-fold, a sign of the demand for higher education, especially in areas such as finance and business, says executive director D.K. Garg. But each time he wants to increase enrolment, Garg says he has battled with the government body in charge of private colleges—the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
The experience of Ishan, which offers a postgraduate diploma in management, highlights one of the key challenges facing a booming private education sector in India and the body tasked with regulating it.
Institutes such as Garg’s use their experience to dub the government as overly meddlesome and corrupt.
AICTE member-secretary K. Narayana Rao says his organization is only trying to make sure private colleges don’t take students and their parents for an expensive ride. (Ishan, for one, charges Rs1.6 lakh for a two-year course.) In an interview, Rao said he could not comment on Ishan specifically, claiming he was not familiar with the case, but said alleged corruption at AICTE is an exception rather than the norm.
“Let us be frank on this issue,” he says. “We can’t say that 100% we are genuine.” But, Rao says, if he hears 90% of the time that inspections of educational institutes by AICTE-appointed inspectors are going well, he accepts it.
Ishan Institute of Management and Technology dubs AICTE overly meddlesome and corrupt.
In multiple conversations with
Mint, that began on 20 August following an email he wrote to a columnist at the paper, Garg claimed that Ishan’s desire to increase enrolment has repeatedly met harassment and delays.
Back in 2005, when he tried to double seats from 120 to 240, Garg says he faced demands for a Rs50 lakh bribe and, specifically, to pay for an expensive dog—Garg can only recall it was a “white, long-haired” breed.
Meanwhile, Ishan has steadily obtained clearances and Garg’s institute has grown. In July 2006, Garg again applied for 120 more seats. He says his initial refusal to pay a bribe resulted in two unannounced inspections. He alleges he knows of other schools where inspectors give advance notice and expect multi-course meals to be waiting.
At Ishan, they first came on 11 January, then again on 3 August. Both times they ended up citing a faculty shortage, says Garg. AICTE requires a teacher-student ratio of 1:15. Ishan, Garg maintains, actually does a lot better, with one teacher for every 12 students.
During the August check, Garg says, the inspectors also noted a shortage of computers.