Telangana tech colleges to hike fees

Hyderabad: Another fee revision for professional courses is on the cards for the coming academic year (2016-17) in Telangana State. The TS government had effected a steep hike in MBBS/ BDS fees for the current academic year (2015-16) and it’s now the turn of other professional courses such as engineering, MBA, MCA, B.Ed, Pharmacy, Law etc., for a fee hike. The hike will vary from college to college based on the availability of qualified faculty and infrastructure facilities in colleges and the expenditure the managements have incurred on them. The managements of these professional colleges have been seeking fee hikes ranging from 10 per cent to 30 per cent for these courses from 2016-17. The fee revision is due for 2016-17 since the fee was last revised three years ago, in undivided AP in 2013-14.

Fees should be revised every 3 years As per existing norms, the fees for professional courses has to be revised every three years based on inflation, income and expenditure statements of colleges. This will be the first fee revision to be effected by the TS government for professional courses other than medical / dental courses. The TS government has constituted an Admissions and Fee Regulatory Committee, headed by retired High Court judge Justice P. Swaroop Reddy, to make recommendations on the fee revision. “Majority of the colleges want a hike of 30 per cent while those with deficiencies in qualified faculty and infrastructure facilities seek a 10 per cent hike. We will submit the proposals to the committee once the notification is issued, which is expected in a week,” said Mr Ramesh Nimmatoori of the Consortium of Telangana State Professional Colleges Associations. The committee had written to the government in October urging it to issue a notification inviting fee revision proposals from colleges. However, the government had asked the committee to wait since the full-fledged committee comprising 11 members was yet to be formed.

Sources in the Higher Education department said the committee had written again to the state government last week stating that any more delay in issuing the notification would delay the fee fixation process affecting the admission schedule in 2016-17 since counselling for admissions could not be conducted till the fee was finalised. The committee brought to the notice of the government that since it had to decide college-wise fees by examining the proposals and audited financial statements of every college, it may take around six months to complete the process. It suggested that it would be better if the notification was issued at the earliest and give about two months time for the colleges to submit their proposals for which there was no need for having a full-fledged AFRC. It added that the government could appoint a full-fledged committee by February when it would need to examine the proposals of the colleges.