Administer Triple Test to Eradicate Capitation Fee -- S Vaidhyasubramaniam
August 30, 2014
The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in its recent report has ranked education sector number two in the list of black money generators in India. The capitation fee for professional colleges last year was `5,953 crore due to the monstrous capitation fee syndrome that generates an assured annual continuous flow of black money—thanks to the troika of selfish and/or helpless parents, opportunist college management and silent regulators. The perpetual demand for professional education puts the value of this perpetual motion machine at `66,144 crore (present value of this perpetuity at 9 per cent discount rate). The Supreme Court has recently appointed Salman Khurshid as amicus curiae to analyse and submit a report on how the value of this golden goose asset be reduced to zero. Can it be? Yes, it can be reduced to zero.
The Supreme Court in the TMA Pai Foundation case (2002) has insulated administrative rights of private colleges from government intrusion and in P A Inamdar (2005) directed private institutions to ensure transparency, fairness and non-exploitation in their admission mechanism. As directed by the court, concerned state governments and private colleges have a working formula in place with a 50:50 or 40:60 or 30:70 ratio allowing private colleges a certain percentage of seats to be filled by themselves as management quota though they are entitled for the entire 100 per cent. While the state government’s allocation is capitation-free, the issue of capitation fee in the management quota seats needs to be arrested without violating the rights of private institutions.
While, the Supreme Court in P A Inamdar has held that right to administer includes admission, the onus is on the private college managements to prove that they pass Supreme Court’s triple test of transparency, fairness and non-exploitation. The court can also lay down a scheme just as it did in the case of Unnikrishnan in 1993 which was later scrapped and held unconstitutional in TMA Pai. The unconstitutionality was in the snatching of rights from the private managements and not in the broad methodology. With the advent of technology, the court can direct the Central and state governments to constitute a Professional Colleges Admissions Authority (PCAA) to monitor the triple test of admissions and put in place a fool-proof mechanism to do the same.
To begin with, the increasing multiplicity of entrance exams must be halted, as this is not only becoming a torturous burden for the students but also a huge revenue model for private institutions through application sales and back-door entry breeding capitation fee. The PCAA must ensure that all private institutions, either deemed universities or affiliated colleges or autonomous institutions, admit only based on national tests like JEE or NEET along with +2 marks or follow local state government policy.
Without interfering in the admission rights of private institutions, the PCAA can create an online admission exchange powered by latest technology that ensures a student with unique application ID can apply to any number of institutions using standard test and +2 scores and that the institution admits such students without collecting any capitation fee. This fool-proof technology-driven online system can be established to monitor proper compliance through filing of annual admission returns. Such a robust online system will expose any unfair admission practice by any institution. This way, the right of admission of private institutions is not compromised and at the same time the admission triple test is administered. The court which is “a sentinel on the qui vive” using Article 142 can administer the triple test without affecting rights flowing from Articles 19, 25, 26, 29 and 30, and put to rest the issue of capitation fee.
vaidhya@sastra.edu
The writer is Dean, Planning & Development,SASTRA University
