Going to college a distant dream, but mgmts extract fee

Going to college a distant dream, but mgmts extract fee

Preeti.Biswas@timesgroup.com

Hyderabad: 25.06.2020

After schools, it’s colleges offering professional courses that are forcing students to shell out fee. This, despite the University Grants Commission (UGC) categorically asking colleges not to insist on immediate payment of annual tuition or semester fee.

Students allege several engineering, pharmacy and management institutions have asked them to clear tuition fees on or before June 30, failing which they would not be allowed to attend online classes or even appear for semester exams.

“Parents of many students have lost their jobs, not receiving salaries and facing financial crisis. How can the college management force us during such a pandemic?” asked Mir Mahmood Ali, a final year BTech student at a private engineering college.

Notice issued by one such private engineering college, (TOI has a copy), states: “Those students of convenor, management and foreign students who have not yet paid tuition fee and common service fee for academic year 2019-20 are directed to pay the fee on or before June 30 positively. Otherwise they will not be allowed to attend the exams.”

Student of a deemed to be university at Moinabad, Satwik Reddy (name changed) said,” Our annual fee is ₹2.50 lakh, which also includes transportation. Management has said if we don’t pay it, we will not be eligible for the next semester,” sharing the circular which instructs all BTech students “to pay the even/odd semester fee (tuition and transport/hostel) dues” on or before June 30. “Without fee payment, you will not be allowed to enrol for ERP (enterprise resource planning) registration to attend the classes,” it adds.

College managements attributed this to the Telangana government’s failure to clear fee reimbursement dues. “Some college managements must be forcing students to pay tuition fee as they have to clear salaries of teachers, which is a pre-condition for affiliation. The state government has not released fee reimbursement dues for the last two years due to which many colleges don’t have sufficient funds,” said KVK Rao, general secretary of the All India Federation of Self-Financing Technical Institutions. He added that institutions face curbs on collection of fee for the 2020-21 academic year and not for 2019-20.