Partha rap on select private varsities

Some of the new private universities and several private institutes in the state are allegedly not adhering to the rules laid down by the government for them.

The complaints of rule flout have prompted the state government to start an investigation and take appropriate steps to ensure the institutes address the alleged lapses and offer quality education, education minister Partha Chatterjee said on Sunday.

"Our government sincerely supports the need to set up more private universities and private professional institutes in Bengal to open more avenues for students keen to pursue higher education. It is in our regime that we have allowed several private organisations to set up institutes. But we will not allow any private institute to compromise on the quality of education," said Chatterjee.

The minister said this on the sidelines of the annual convocation of Globsyn Business School, a private institute.

Barely half an hour before making the comment on private institutes, the minister, while addressing the degree recipients, praised Globsyn Business School and congratulated it for being "one the best institutions of its kind" in the country.

Later, he told reporters that he had no complaints against Globsyn.

The government had last year promised to set up a cell to keep tabs on the newly set-up private universities and other professional institutes in the state. The cell had not been set up for a long time.

Following the rise in the number of complaints against some of the newly set-up private institutes, the government had to expedite the process of forming the cell, the minister said. "It (the cell) has started operating recently. The members of the cell have visited some of the institutes from where we got complaints. I have asked the officials in the cell to submit a report at the earliest," Chatterjee said.

The government has announced cell members will visit an institute twice a year to find out whether it is abiding by the rules.

"The routine inspections are not meant to harass the institutes. But I would like to remind them that they have been granted the permission to run courses on the basis of their promise that they would strictly follow the rules laid down by the government," the minister said.

Amity University, The University of Engineering and Management, JIS University, Seacom Skill University, Adamas University, Neotia University and Techno India University are among the private universities set up over the past three years.

Each of the university was set up under a state act.

Chatterjee said the government had been receiving complaints from various sources about irregularities in the functioning of some of these universities.

He refused to divulge the names of the errant institutions but said: "Not all the new private universities are bad." For example, he said, Amity University was doing well.

There is no complaint against any university about infrastructure, a source in the higher education department said. But there are other areas where most of the institutions need to improve. For example, the faculty quality at most private institutes is very poor.

"In some institutes, the faculty members are under-qualified. In others, there are some good teachers but the number of teaching staff is too few compared with the number of students. There are lapses in the examination system, too," an official in the education department said.