AICTE guidelines for tech colleges …Anahita Mukherji I TNN
Mumbai: Over two lakh MBA aspirants going through the gruelling process of B-school admissions can breathe easy now. On Thursday, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) released a notification detailing a number of student-friendly guidelines that are often flouted by technical institutions.
According to the notification, any technical institution caught violating the rules will be brought to book. The punishment may be as severe as withdrawing AICTE recognition. Currently, MBA aspirants from across the country have appeared for a series of entrance tests and are juggling interviews and group discussions for different institutions. As each B-school has its own admission schedule, dates for admission often clash between B-schools. Admission to one Bschool is sometimes over by the time the admission process for another begins, limiting a students choice.
However, heres something students may not know. According to AICTE guidelines, the admission process to management institutions continues till the course begins. So, if students withdraw admission to an institution any time before the course commences, they must be refunded the entire fee, after a reduction of only Rs 1,000 for processing charges.
Colleges often cleverly conceal this information. For instance, candidates who were selected for both the MBA and the postgraduate diploma in management at Christ College, Bangalore, were told to pay Rs 1.8 lakhthe entire fee for the first yearby February 9, though the course begins only in June. Whats worse, the admission card said that the fee once paid will not be refunded under any circumstances.
Students, who had gained admission to Christ College but were awaiting the results for other institutions, said they spent some agonising weeks wondering whether to pay the fee. If I paid the fee and then later got a seat in another institution, I would end up losing Rs 1.8 lakh. On the other hand, if I let go of the seat, I may not have made it anywhere else, says a student. He did not pay the fee and let go off the seat, a decision he now regrets.
However, Shibu Sebastian, public relations officer at Christ College, says the institution refunds the fee if a candidate wants to withdraw admission and has a genuine reason for doing so. The college told students that they would not get their fee back only to deter them from jumping from one institution to another and blocking the seat for a candidate on the waiting list, he adds.