People keep talking about the lack of facilities in the Indian universities and attribute it to the poor funding and other governmental policies but a recent report published by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India identifies Anna University, Chennai, flouting many rules and policies.

Violation of policies, improper planning and compromised quality of higher education were some of the issues that the university has been identified with in this report. The reason behind these deviances seem to be the affiliation of newly opened colleges across Tamil Nadu to the state’s premier technical and professional courses university, Anna University.

The audit was conducted on 149 colleges which were affiliated with the university; of these over 96 colleges were found to be in violation of polices and mandates. It should also be noted that the laboratory facilities for the undergraduate technical courses in over 14 colleges were not meeting the requirements set forth by the AICTE.

Lack of faculty has always been addressed as concern in the Indian higher education scenario but as per the AICTE stipulations the required faculty-students ration is 1:15. The audit reports that Anna University’s affiliated colleges maintain a ratio of 1:16 to 1:60 in over 14 colleges and the overall ratio of the faculty to students was found to be 1:38. The report reasoned that this poor ratio lead to the decline in the quality of education offered by Anna University.

The fee structure of the affiliated colleges have also come under scrutiny as the self supporting courses, which charges double the fees of a regular course, have offered despite the government’s policy. And these policy deviations make higher education twice as costly for the students and reduce the quality of education.