With representatives of around 270 management institutes and 49 MBA departments from engineering colleges demanding at the senate meeting of the University of Pune (UoP) that MBA faculty be regularised,acting vice-chancellor (VC) Sanjay Chahande gave an in-principle approval to set up a committee to look into the grievances of management colleges. The issues range from the lack of a permanent Board of Studies (BoS) and no upgrade of the syllabus for the past four years to poor representation of the management institutions in the varsity. Mahesh Abale,head,MBA department,MIT College of Engineering,said,The MBA syllabus is to be reformed every three years. It was done regularly since 2002,but in 2011,no changes were made. Even the Ph.D courses need to be passed by the BoS but it was passed by the chairman of the management faculty without any consultation with the board. Management institutes representatives said as the management faculty of the varsity lacks a permanent BoS,the adhoc members were unable to keep up with the changing industry demands. This has resulted in over 40 per cent seats remaining vacant. Concerns over admissions to Ph.D programmes were also raised in the senate meeting on Saturday and Sunday. As new guides and research centres have not been approved and entrance tests have not been conducted regularly,Ph.D candidates end up waiting for over two-three years Parag Kalkar,director,Sinhgad Institute of Management,Lonavala,said,At present,our Board is an ad-hoc body nominated by the vice-chancellor and other university officials,though we have been around for over 40 years. MBA courses were started in 1971. As they are not elected members,they dont have the peer pressure to perform or lose the seat. On the management facultys representation in the varsity senate,academic council or the management council,Kalkar said,While MBA institutes constitute one-third of the total number of the colleges affiliated to UoP,our representatives have no voting rights in the academic or management councils. Even in the senate,we come from the PG teachers category and our number is small. Though under the same Maharashtra Public Universities Act,universities in Mumbai allow directors of MBA colleges in the senate,not one of our 260 directors are senate members. UoP allows 20 seats to college principals,but none have come to us.
