Making A Mockery Of 'Mandatory Disclosures'

All technical institutions in higher education have to display the information submitted to AICTE on their portal. Strangely, close to 40 percent don’t. Half of them don’t even update it…

- Aeshwarya Tiwari

How mandatory are ‘Mandatory Disclosures’? This question keeps raising its head every time some information is sought. Not filing what is mandatory, the website links not working or even the links leading to a ‘404 error’ page have become the arsenal of institutions which thrive in the lack of transparency. These newer ways to obfuscate information that students may want to know are thwarting all efforts to create transparency amongst institutions.

There are more than 10,000+AICTE approved institutes currently functioning in the country, of these, 6,151 institutes are offering engineering and technology programmes at UG, PG and Diploma level. However, when Careers360 tried to access information, most institutes were found failing in terms of sharing the factual data on their web portals which they are supposed to do through Mandatory Disclosures.

Despite the fact that every year these institutes get their approval renewed only when they disclose all details as mandated and even file a signed affidavit and also host inspections through visits by expert committees, they have cleverly avoided the disclosures to be accessible to public. While this raises serious questions on the institutions as well as the role of regulator in ensuring that such information is available, the entire purpose seems to be defeated.