Education, Careers & Professional News
CAT Eligibility Norms Set To Change
The CAT Group, which conducts the common admission test (CAT) to Indian Institutes of Management, has decided to change the eligibility criteria for taking the entrance exam.
A clause, which made it mandatory that students taking the test should be from institutes affiliated to the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), will be dropped. AIU is an autonomous body to decide equivalence of foreign degrees and has 277 members.
But now, students from institutes with University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education affiliation will be eligible to appear for CAT. The Association of Indian Universities clause was introduced in 1993 to maintain a yardstick at a time when the education sector was opening up and new institutes were mushrooming.
Sources in the CAT Group said that a meeting of its members scheduled next week will formally strike down this clause.
The decision comes in the wake of a Gujarat High Court order, which ruled that the clause should be quashed as it was unreasonable and arbitrary. The order was passed by a single-judge HC Bench which heard a case filed by three CAT examinees who were not called for an interview for the 2005-06 session on the ground that their institute, Ahmedabad-based Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, was not affiliated to Association of Indian Universities.
The court had observed that the clause requires to be quashed as it would lead to ignoring the recognition granted by statutory authorities like UGC, Centre and the state governments. The judge further observed that AIU cannot accord any recognition as it was not a statutory body.
A Division Bench of the HC, where IIM-A appealed against the order, also upheld the ruling. We have been toying with the idea of dropping AIU affiliation for some time now for we believe that it was affecting students from institutes that have applied for AIU affiliation and have been awaiting a nod, said a source.
Besides doing away with this clause, the court has also told the B-school directors to be in touch with the CAT group that comprises professors and admission in charge of all six IIMs.
Prakash Apte, director IIM-Bangalore, said the directors have always been kept in picture on important decisions, even if they were not part of the CAT group.
Now, they will have to assist them informally on a regular basis.
Sources: Online Resources