Universities to roll back fee refund policy post COVID

Universities to roll back fee refund policy post COVID

c-Puniti.Pandey@timesgroup.com

28.12.2020

UGC has come for the rescue of parents battling financial crisis due to lockdown and has instructed educational institutes to refund fees of students who withdraw their admission from the first-year undergraduate, postgraduate courses for the academic session 2020-21. Akhil Shahani, director, Thadomal Shahani Centre For Management observes that the move is introduced only during the pandemic and the decision will be rolled back once the situation normalises.

“Several universities in India have a policy of not refunding admission charges of students even if they drop out before the course starts. They make a huge amount of revenue from this. The UGC directive of refunding all fees is only for the year 2020-21 due to the hardships created by COVID, it will hit the revenues of universities as their expenses remain the same. It is unlikely that universities will change their refund policies post COVID,” he says.

The UGC directive is a special case for 2020-21, he adds. Once the situation returns to normal, the universities will go back to their old policies of non-refundable admission fees. The revenue from this is too large to give up easily.

The fee refund policy by UGC is already being followed at JK Lakshmipat University. Apart from the Rs 1,000 bank processing charges, the university refunds the entire admission amount.

“We have clearly mentioned the fee refund policy in the joining letter for respective courses. We just deducting the bank processing charges from the fees,” says KK Maheshwari, officiating registrar, JK Lakshmipat University, Jaipur.