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Sambhar Mafia - Cooked To Kill!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

AICTE acts tough, cracks down on Amity

Glossy spreads in leading business magazines & newspapers and tall claims about state-of-the-art infrastructure, world-class placements are some of the selling points used by the infamous Amity Business School, Noida. Amity had used the ‘thought leadership’ plank to gain respect among the student community. It had regular columns in magazines like Business Today. Amity also conducted online quizzes in partnership with Business World. Being a big advertiser in these magazines worked out to Amity’s advantage as it was successful in ‘buying’ the rankings in the annual B-School survey. The AICTE has finally woken up to all these false claims and has decided to withdraw the approval for some of the courses offered by Amity.

Few months ago, Rashmi Bansal had mentioned that the owner of Amity Business School was wanted by Interpol for financial frauds committed in Germany.

However, Amity’s website sings a different tune:

Amity has been setup by the vision of Dr. Ashok K. Chauhan Chairman of the worldwide AKC Group of Companies who went to Germany over four decades ago and established a great business empire and became one of the greatest NRI’s of Europe. It is his commitment to his country and his believe that India will be world's superpower by 2030 that he established the Amity institutions.


The Telegraph has more on the latest developments:

“Amity Business School was found to conduct a large number of unapproved courses on the same premises, some even in collaboration with foreign universities that require the council’s mandatory sanction,” the technical education council said in a press statement.

The list of complaints against Amity is substantive. “Their admission procedure was not transparent. The institute was involved in commercialisation of education and charged exorbitant fees,” said the council.

The Amity Business School charges Rs 4.1 lakh for two years from non-sponsored students and Rs 6.2 lakh from company-sponsored students. The institution claims that it invests the money in infrastructure.

So who's next?

10 Comments:

  • Two posts on Interpol and Frauds. I thought I crash-landed into Interpol websie ;)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:53 AM  

  • Looks like its "India's Most Wanted" week on Sambhar Mafia... :D

    By Blogger Nirav, at 9:31 AM  

  • A friend of mine was supposed to Join Amity last year and then decided against it at the last moment. I have heard some of these stories from him ....

    By Blogger Cogito, at 10:03 AM  

  • Offering unapproved courses is certainly a no-no but what's wrong with charging high fees? No one is forcing folks to join Amity; it's upto the students whether they consider the fee worth the quality of education they receive.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:20 AM  

  • Yeah, seems like the Mafia is on the prowl, with knives, guns et al... DSQ yesterday, Amity today!

    By Blogger Vijay Krishna Narayanan, at 12:14 PM  

  • What next? IIPM is my guess!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:10 PM  

  • @Krithika,
    I will make amends soon. Will post on some other topic.

    @Nirav,
    I didn't plan it that way. It is turning out to be a Most Wanted week.

    @Cogito,
    Good that ur friend didn't join

    @Antrix Deepak,
    the market can determine the fees. However Amity can't be charging exorbitant fees for below average courses. It is like robbing in the name of education.

    @Vijay Krishna,
    I believe in non-violence

    @Lumbergh,
    That's my guess as well.

    By Blogger Kaps, at 6:17 PM  

  • AMITY/ IIPM there is so much being written about them and is being proved that these schools are frauds and cheating students.

    I still don't get it, why are students chasing these institutes and still paying such high costs?

    The huge claims by IIPM in their page long ads that we teach today what others will follow tomorrow make me laugh! Only schools like AMITY will do so. Surely people are not that daft as to fall prey to such false claims.

    By Blogger Minal, at 7:38 PM  

  • @Minal,
    I think there are some students who are not aware of these hard facts.
    IIPM has been a con job all along. Arindam Chaudhuri's firm is the event manager for the MLTR concert as well.

    @Sakshi,
    Anyway they recover those ad spend by the way of fees.

    By Blogger Kaps, at 10:40 AM  

  • Hello People
    An Amitian speaks, "It is true that Amity shared the same infrastructure of PGDM with its university courses (but they arent unapproved as AMITY University Uttar Pradesh exist as ab Act of legislation in both the houses in the UP govt.) The MBA course is in its second batch this year and the young MBAs are doing wonders as they are as preffered by companies as are the flagship PGDM folks. Companies like LG Electronics, TCS, Nucleus Software Exports and many more have started coming for campus placements and are recruiting the class of 2006." The student who is a good old friend of mine adds that the quality of teachers at AMITY is NOT good but they enjoy the second year (3rd & 4th sem) as they are tought by eminent industry experts including CMD/COO of some big organizations. He maintains that the core faculty of AMITY Business school is a crap and must be reshuffled by the CHAUHANS. Even the existing admission process is a crap since they have 6 other specialized MBA courses apart from the main PGDM (AICTE approved) and MBA (Uniersity course). This half a dozen MBA makes AMITY suspicious.
    They should all be trashed. He requests the Chauhans to change the entire administration with efficient people even at the lower levels.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:54 AM  

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