Managements of private engineering and medical colleges have demanded an increase in the fees for government quota seats during the first round of negotiations held with the government on Tuesday.
While the government intends to maintain status quo, both on the fees and the seat-sharing ratio between the government quota and private quota seats, private colleges are insisting on a 10 to 20 per cent increase in the fees. When probed, State Minister for Higher Education V.S. Acharya told The Hindu that they may consider a “small hike” in the private quota fee, but are unwilling to “increase the burden on the merit (or government quota) students”. The fees in both medical and engineering courses, for students applying through the Common Entrance Test under the government quota, will remain unchanged, he emphasised.
However, private managements are not interested in increasing the private quota fees for the simple reason that a vast majority of colleges are not finding takers for their seats. “Unless the government quota fee is increased, it will be of no use to us. The current system does not work, particularly after the implementation of the AICTE pay scales,” said D. Jawahar, CEO of PESIT and a key member of the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Medical Colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K). He added that tier-II colleges, which have seen huge numbers of unfilled seats in recent years, would be closed to force down unless the fee is increased.
Last year, a fee-fixation committee, headed by Justice B. Padmaraj, had come up with a differential fee slab (where varying fee structures were arrived at depending on each college's balance sheets and infrastructure) for each of the over 170 colleges. Though the findings were not made public last year, the government was reluctant to implement the recommendations because the fee charged was reportedly too high and would burden students in the State.
Medical Colleges too
Representatives of medical colleges too are demanding an increase in fees this time around. Their contention is that medical fees have not been hiked for over five years, and the current fee structure was “wholly unsustainable”. However, the government does not appear inclined to give in to this demand either, primarily because they feel that the high private quota fee ceiling (up to Rs. 3.25 lakh) can subsidise the government quota students.
