Madurai Kamaraj University College (MKUC) here has stopped taking students for its MBA programme from the upcoming 2016-17 academic year following instructions from MKU officials since the programme was being offered without the approval of All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).
Condemning the university for the decision, students form the current and earlier batches have apprehended whether the degrees awarded to them were valid.
A. Pandiarajan, student from the first batch of MBA when it was started in 2013 in MKUC, questioned whether AICTE approval was even mandatory for MBA programmes. “The Supreme Court has ruled in 2013 that AICTE approval is not mandatory for MCA and MBA courses. A review petition filed by AICTE was also subsequently dismissed,” he said.
Alleging that his batch of students had only received provisional certificated and were yet to receive their degree certificates, Mr. Pandiarajan urged university officials to clear the confusion over the validity of the course.
Another student from the 2015-17 batch questioned why the university allowed the programme in the first place if the mandatory AICTE approval was not available. Strangely, he pointed out, the MKU had not discontinued the MCA programme, which is continuing for nearly 13 years in the college without AICTE approval. “It is intriguing why they stopped only MBA,” he said.
Apart from concerns raised by past and current students , P. Murugesan, president, MKUC unit of Madurai Kamaraj, Manonmaniam Sundaranar, Mother Teresa and Alagappa University Teachers' Associations (MUTA), said that discontinuing the course would also affect the finances of the college.
Despite being a university college, Mr. Murugesan, pointed out that MKUC was run on self-financing mode with little financial support from the university.
“Presently, there are morning and afternoon shifts, with roughly 60 students in each shift. Apart from students availing themselves of government scholarships and fee concessions, others are paying at least ₹ 40,000 per year,” he said.
He also raised a suspicion whether the course was stopped in the college in a bid to improve the falling enrolment for the MBA programme offered by the university.
G. Arumugam, Registrar (in-charge), denied the allegation. “It is certainly not to improve admissions to the university. Apart from AICTE approval, the MBA programme in MKUC had other issues as well, including availability of faculty. That is why it was stopped,” he said.
He, however, added that students of current and past batches would not face any difficulty in obtaining their degrees.
