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G. Naga Sridhar

Hyderabad, Jan. 11

Here is some good news for the aspirants of management education in semi-urban and rural areas. The All Indian Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is now working on ways and means to ensure quality management education in semi-urban and rural business schools and a revision of some of the norms are likely.

A taskforce constituted for the purpose has submitted its report to the apex body and the report would now be reviewed for a possible review of norms, Mr Furan Qamar, a member of the task force and All India Management Board of AICTE, told Business Line, on the sidelines of a seminar organised by School of Management Studies, University of Hyderabad, here on Thursday.

The issue has become significant as there has been a remarkable spurt in the number of business schools and with a corresponding rise in the number of youngsters who would prefer to be armed with a MBA degree.

The primary concerns pertaining to business schools in semi-urban and rural areas are poor access ratio for the rural graduates, poor employability compared to their urban counterparts, lack of adequate exposure to industry adversely affecting the hands-on experience and the quality of faculty, among others, he said.

It has also been suggested that the AICTE may move away from infrastructure-driven norms regime to a region-specific norms as the infrastructure required for setting up a business school and number of students may vary significantly from urban to rural areas. “Something may be done from the sustainability point of view of business schools and semi-urban areas,” Mr Qamar said.

According to the Association of Indian Management Schools data there are 1,800 business schools in the country. For the last two years, there has been a spurt in the number of new schools, one-third of which are in semi-urban and rural areas. “This trend may increase at a great pace now. Last year, 170 new business schools had been set up. We are expecting it to go up to 200 this year,” said Mr Uday Salunkhe, President, Association of Indian Management Schools.

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