On April 19, 2010, Mr. Kapil Sibal, Central Minister Human Resource and Development, came up with a new bill known as ‘The Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical Education Institutions, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities, Bill, 2010’. The bill was approved by the cabinet a month after its proposal on May 19th. Even today, nearly two years after the approval by the cabinet, the bill is still not cleared by the parliament due to the strong opposition from the parties concerned. The worrying aspect with the bill is the statement that states that the present policy of the nation is against the commercialization of higher education. This is even supported by the rulings made by the different courts in the country.

The main objectives of the bill

One of the important objectives of the bill is to prohibit the acceptance of admission fees and other charges other than the fee or charges for admission as announced by the institution in the prospectus for admission.

Another important objective of the bill is to prevent the admission of the students without the specified admission test for the process of selection of students, where the selection test is conducted by suitable statutory authority.

The bill also aims at prohibiting the call for  or charging or accepting, capitation fee or demand by donation, as a means of consideration for giving admission to any seat or seats in the course or programme of study, by the institutions. The bill prohibits the direct or indirect collection of capitation or donation.

Full authority to the officers

According to the bill, the office bearers who were in charge during the time when the offence is committed, and were responsible to the society or trust for the conduct of the business of the society or the trust, as well as the society or the trust, shall be considered guilty of the offence and will be liable to be prosecuted and punished accordingly. The bill also states that no suit or any other legal proceedings can be initiated against the government or officer or authority or person who exercises the power entrusted with him or her or discharge the functions as stipulated by the act for anything which is in good faith.

Indian universities fail to secure a Nobel Prize

The objective of the bill is however negative and not positive. The bill does not contain any provisions to make the professional institutions world class. When Mr. Kapil Sibal assumed the responsibility as minister for Human Resource Development, he has repeatedly expressed his concern over why no Indian institute had managed to secure Nobel Prize post independence.

The negative impact of the bill

The bill which was proposed by the Ministry of Human Resource and development do not contain any such noble objectives and provisions to address such concerns. It is high time to consider what changes are required in the national policy to make the higher education in India globally competitive, to the extent of producing Nobel Prize winners. So to understand the changes that are needed, we should look at leading foreign institutions and how they perform better. For example, the Harvard University maintains an endowment fund which is about Rs 100,000 crore and this is the case with many other leading institutions in the United States.

These institutions did not get rise such big amounts without accepting donations and incidentally, using them as what we call capitation fees. Basically is there anything wrong with allowing educational institutions to accept donations- with donors obviously receiving some returns? That is one issue.

Why problem with relaxing admission criteria?

The question is whether education institutions can accept donations and as a means of exchange, offer to include their names on their buildings, name professorships and even let them have some admissions in return. There seems to be no problem with the first two, but what has become an issue is the last one, relaxing admission criteria.

In the present day, we have an education system which admits students under relaxed criteria which is based on caste or soon probably even based on religion and no return is expected from the student for the concession given. Most of them consider it as their natural due, and do not even bother to support students from their own community.

The problems with the proposed bill

Think of a situation where instead of relaxing admission norms, an individual provides enough donations that will be offered as scholarship to needy students, or endows a chair at a high salary, or supports a laboratory, or pays for the construction of a building.

Another question that requires an answer is whether education institutions should or should not accept such donations and offer a seat for the donor’s ward if he or she is found be eligible as a students from a reserved community. This is the primary issue with the bill.

The second problem is with the procedure for securing admissions. The proposed bill assigns huge importance to entrance tests. In most of the foreign universities entrance exams forms just a part of the admission procedure. Even if a candidate scores high marks in the entrance test, he or she will be informed that the university will consider him or her for the admission and do not offer an admission straight away. The foreign universities consider the entrance exam scores as a means to shortlist candidates and not to select students. The candidates are directed to provide the names of three teachers whom the university can refer for evaluation of the personality and other qualities of the candidate.

We lack a comprehensive method of selection

In this direction, the Indian institutions are to an extent arrogant. They never refer to the teachers who know the students well. Most the foreign universities select the candidates to be admitted based on the entrance test score, performance in school examinations, reports from teachers and personal interview.

It may be observed that such a comprehensive method of selecting students for various courses in the universities and institutes is absent in the bill and to an extent prohibits it.