Two-timing charge on B-school backfires on students

The Sinhgad Technical Education Society’s B-school may soon go scot-free from the charge of enforcing extra courses on students...

Sinhgad society scandal After alleging an extra course was imposed on them, students set to pay for not following it up

The Sinhgad Technical Education Society’s B-school may soon go scot-free from the charge of enforcing extra courses on students, along with a regular management course, as neither the students nor the students’ organisations that had levelled the allegation turned up before the fact-finding committee for the last seven meetings. This may also result in students shelling out almost eight times their regular fee.

In July last year it was alleged that the Sinhgad B-school had made it compulsory for over 100 students to take up the autonomous diploma course with one fulltime management course. For example, if a student wanted admission to MBA, he or she had to also enroll for a post-graduate diploma in management. This in effect increased the fee burden on the students by almost eight times. The fee for a regular course at the institute is around Rs 50,000, and that of the autonomous course is about Rs four lakh. The students had vehemently protested this move.

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According to norms, such a practice is illegal. A student had given a written complaint against the institute to the officials of University of Pune (UoP) in July itself while some students’ organisations had staged agitations in the institute.

To probe the matter, the UoP set up a three-member fact-finding committee. But ever since its formation, the student who had lodged the complaint and the agitating students’ bodies have not shown up. The panel has not received a single complaint as yet.

UoP Vice-Chancellor Narendra Jadhav confirmed this. “So far the committee has conducted seven meetings, but no complainant has come before it,” he said.

“The university had taken immediate action with a view to investigate the matter in a transparent way, but now the complainants themselves are nowhere to be seen. This has resulted in waste of many man-hours and money of the UoP,” he added.

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Arvind Deshpande, registrar of the Sinhgad Institute refused to comment on the issue.

The one that did not get away

The Suryadatta Institute, which faced allegations similar to those on Sinhgad Tech Society, has been found prima facie guilty by a fact-finding committee, which recently submitted its report to the university. “We have set up another three-member committee of management council members, which will study the report and recommend action,” said the vice chancellor. The probe panel did not consult the complainants. “We checked documents, which was sufficient to prove the irregularities,” said a member, who felt the same procedure could be applied for the Sinhgad-run institute too.