Committee warns colleges against hiking fee above 8% ceiling

Students should come forward with complaints: Fee regulatory committee chairman Shylendra Kumar

The fee regulatory committee and the State government seem to be at loggerheads over the fee structure of professional courses for the 2018-19 academic year.

At a press conference on Thursday, retired Justice V. Shylendra Kumar, chairman of the fee regulatory committee, said the committee would penalise medical, dental, and engineering college managements if they hiked their institutional quota fee by more than 8% from the previous academic year. Students should come forward to lodge complaints or anyone can do so on their behalf. The committee will look into the merit of even anonymous complaints,” said Mr. Kumar.

College managements are worried as those offering medical, dental, and engineering streams are moving towards a consensual agreement where they are expecting the State government itself to hike the fee by more than 10%. However, Mr. Kumar said that even if the State government enters into a consensual agreement, they were bound to ensure that the fee hike ceiling is at 8%. He also claimed that the fee fixed by the committee was final and the government could overrule their decision only in “special cases” which he said was if they wanted the annual fee hike to be less than what is fixed by the committee. He also claimed that the Chief Minister and other Ministers had not been properly briefed by the bureaucrats.

The committee pointed out that the colleges provided incorrect information about their accounts.

Fees for NRI quota seats have been fixed at 10 times the amount charged for institutional quota students for medical and dental courses, while it will be four times that of institutional quota fees for engineering students. The committee has said that the fees collected from NRI students should be kept in a separate bank account, which should be used for providing education concession for underprivileged and students belonging to the Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe community.

The fee hike for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) courses is also likely to be capped at 8% compared to the previous academic year.