The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) on Friday made minor changes in its norms that had been formulated for admission to postgraduate diploma in management and postgraduate certificate in management. The apex body in India for technical education regulation has clarified that the B-schools can now chose the Common Admission Test (CAT), Management Aptitude Test (MAT) or the examination conducted by the states for providing admission to students. B-schools will also be allowed to pick students for admission using a combination of these tests. The AICTE had recently released controversial norms for management institutes, which had been criticized by b-schools. The AICTE has now offered a minor concession in norms but has not addressed the major demands of b-schools, for which they had even approached the Supreme Court. The state governments which will be managing the admission procedure will then offer seats to students in Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) institutions which would be based on the combination of tests that have been picked by the b-schools and ranking of the student according to that. The notification by the AICTE on December 30, 2010 that had proved to be controversial had directed that the state governments would decide whether students would be admitted to b-schools through CAT, MAT or the state government's test. The latest decision of the AICTE regarding the admission process for b-schools does not address several concerns that had been raised by b-schools after the December 2010 notification. Institutes have argued that giving the state governments the power to manage the admission procedure for b-schools, including the decision of where a student will finally get admission was an attempt to taking away their autonomy. They also said that this could lead to corruption and red-tapism.
