“The earlier you book, the lesser you have to pay,” warn admission agents, urging prospective students to hurry up to book management-quota seats. And parents, who are hell-bent on getting their children that prized seat in a reputed college, are willing to go to any extent, even if it means taking up a risky and very expensive proposition.
With the government having no say on how much a college can charge under the management and NRI quotas, colleges are taking anywhere between a few lakh rupees and nearly a crore. And they are not willing to call it a capitation fee, terming it as ‘development fee’ instead.
Their excuse is this: nearly 70 per cent of the seats are subsidised. This means they are paying only a fraction of the amount as fees that the college spends on each student. Because of this, colleges turn to students willing to pay extra to ensure a seat through the management quota to make up for the remaining expenditure.
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“The government wants to ensure subsidised seats for students from Karnataka. Colleges spend lakhs of rupees on each student, who pay Rs. 45,000 as fees. We charge them ‘other’ fees because we cannot burden the management quota students with the entire amount,” said a member of the management of a well-known engineering college in the city.
The “fee” that a student could end up spending on a management quota seat depends wholly on the college and even the course he or she chooses.
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Minister of State for Medical Education Sharanprakash R. Patil claimed that the implementation of the Karnataka Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation and Admission and Determination of Fee) Amendment Bill, 2015, will plug the hole.
“Under the Bill, there will be an admission overseeing committee and a fee regulatory committee, which will supervise these aspects,” he said.
As for colleges admitting more students than permitted under the management quota, he said varsities were authorised to deny permission to such admissions.