MADURAI
The committee formed by Madurai Kamaraj University to inquire into the fee collected by all the government-aided and self-financing colleges has submitted its report to the university.
University sources said that the compiled data would soon be sent to the Chancellor’s office since the committee itself was constituted based on the instruction of the office, following a petition.
However, alleging that the committee had merely collected the data from the colleges, activists demanded a stringent action against those colleges violating the norms and were collecting fees in excess of the government stipulated norms.
A senior official from the university acknowledged that the report had been received. “The committee has basically collected the information from the colleges in a particular format. A majority of the colleges have acknowledged that they were collecting fee far in excess, some of them significantly higher,” he said.
Stating that the colleges had also provided justification for collecting the excess fee, the official said that the reasons ranged from providing salary to all the faculty members and establishment of computer labs and other such facilities for the students.
“We have just collected the data provided by the Principals of the respective colleges. We have not scrutinised the data of investigated whether the information was accurate or not,” an official involved in the committee’s work said.
Welcoming the initiative of the university, R. Murali of Save Higher Education Movement - Tamil Nadu, one of the petitioners who had approached the Governor’s office on this issue, however, stressed that the action should not stop with collection of data. “The university has powers to monitor and inquire into these issues, and it must exercise the same,” he said.
He also pointed to an inquiry conducted by the Regional Joint Director of Collegiate Education in Madurai at few colleges, following a direction from Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on the issue in a petition filed by P. Vijayakumar, former president of Madurai Kamaraj, Manonmaniam Sundaranar, Mother Teresa and Alagappa University Teachers' Association.
The senior official from the university, however, said that further action would be taken based on the directions from the Governor’s office or the Higher Education Department.
