The government’s strict warnings notwithstanding, private engineering colleges continue to charge exorbitant fee from parents seeking admissions for their wards under the management quota.
The target group this time is students who are displeased with the first phase of allotments and want to shift the colleges due to factors such as quality, distance and the institution’s brand name. The violations range from charging higher fee than the prescribed fee of Rs.35,000 and collection of donations. Officials say about 40 to 50 colleges that figure in the ‘medium’ range are exploiting the freedom given to them in filling the management quota.
“I was asked to pay Rs.75,000 for an IT seat and Rs.95,000 for a Computer Science seat,” says a parent who wanted his daughter to get admitted in a women’s engineering college. His daughter got allotment in a college near Dhulapally, which is about 40 km from his residence while the college he approached is just seven km. However, colleges are smart enough to give receipt only for Rs.35,000 tuition fee and Rs.5,500 caution deposit that they can charge officially.
Similar is the case of another student who stays in Kukatpally but got allotment in a college near Hayathnagar. “I have preferred to choose a college near Kompally and got the seat immediately,” he says. However, he had to shell out Rs.70,000 for an ECE seat. “There is no transparency and they do not tell how many seats are vacant,” he says.
The biggest losers, however, are colleges that received few admissions. “We are losing even those few admissions as the convenor quota and management quota fee is the same,” says a principal of a college that received less than 20 admissions.
Interestingly, most of the medium level colleges were worried over the new norms introduced for management quota admissions and the imminent visits of Task Force. These colleges had, in fact, agreed to Rs.35,000 fee for the convenor seats.
