“We are working towards a differential pay structure for teachers since it is not possible to have the same pay structure for all,” Mungekar said.

He was speaking at the inauguration of the “International Workshop on Accreditation” for management institutes organised by NMIMS University.

Emphasising that the teachers should be subjected to a periodic and rigorous assessment, Mungekar said that universities and colleges must be allowed to have a differential pay structure and give incentives to their teachers, depending on their abilities, which would in turn, encourage teachers to perform better. “The rigorous assessment should be done periodically and it will inject accountability, without which things will not improve,” he said.

Meanwhile, saying that international accreditation helps at benchmarking Indian business schools at international levels, NMIMS Vice-Chancellor N M Kondap said that the workshop is an attempt to bring top management schools and foreign accreditation agencies together on one platform. “The deliberations will provide us with new dimensions in accreditation and in the end, we intend to form a working group which will closely work on the accreditation process and how to take it forward,” Kondap said.

Indian School of Business (ISB) dean M R Rao said that while the ISB is in the initial stages of an international accreditation, the process is very demanding but “the exercise helps in assessing one’s own internal strengths”.

However, Mungekar said that even as Indian management institutes look at international accreditation, they should be contextual and take into consideration the social and economic factors of the subcontinent since one cannot merely import the standards of developed markets into India.

Saying that international accreditation must provide room for inclusion, Mungekar said that education should be inclusive of all sections of society including women from rural areas, physically challenged and those facing socio-economic disadvantages.

Accreditation is an approximation and it is not sacrosanct, he said, adding that while accreditation is only at a point in time, knowledge is continuous and as knowledge flows, accreditation must change and norms should also be changeable.

Mungekar emphasised that management schools need to work closely with corporate houses since management draws heavily from field reality and the graduates are products consumed by the corporates. He said the industry must be involved in curriculum framework since the syllabi in most universities are outdated, leading to unemployable graduates.

R A Yadav, acting chairman of the All India Council For Technical Education (AICTE), said that the curriculum at management institutes needs to be of international standard and evaluation and accreditation systems should be output-based and evaluated in terms of whether the graduates are employable.