Business standard has an editorial pointing out that instead of having approvals / accreditations for educational institutions, a better system would be to have a disclosure based approach. Institutes do not need approval, but they are policed to ensure that they disclose all the “important” information to prospective students. Excerpts:
A major question animating law-makers is the fear of “fly by night” firms who will “run away” with the money of students or short-change them. This is reminiscent of the problems seen in the securities markets, where there are concerns about similar “fly by night” firms who sell securities to “hapless investors” and run away. In the securities markets, the country has seen a shift away from the Controller of Capital Issues—who gave out discretionary permissions to any firm seeking to sell securities—to the modern disclosure-based framework. In this disclosure-based framework, the government only emphasises the importance of accurate information being available to the investor when a decision is made to invest in a security.
A similar approach would work very well in education. In a disclosure-based framework, the focus of the government would be on disclosure. For the rest, the decision about what university a person chooses to go to is best made by that person—and not by the government. The key insight here is that—as with investors—students are not eager to waste money on earning low-quality diplomas. Students are self-interested and work hard on trying to identify good programmes. Their efforts at making a choice can be supported by the government, if it runs a disclosure programme whereby accurate and salient information is made available to prospective students. The great advantage of such a disclosure-based approach lies in the fact that it would eliminate entry barriers in higher education, and make possible a surge of supply through which shortages would ease. Reputed global brands would come into the country to offer educational services. The market for education would shift from the present framework of scarcity and low quality to one with competition and choice.
See full article which I found here.