‘TN to act against med colleges over high fees’ Health Min Tells Panel To Look Into Complaints

‘TN to act against med colleges over high fees’ Health Min Tells Panel To Look Into Complaints 

TIMES NEWS NETWORK  10.10.2024

Chennai : The Tamil Nadu govt would recommend action against medical colleges for charging excessive fees, health minister Ma Subramanian said Wednesday. The selection committee had received two complaints from parents about colleges that demanded “prohibitively high fees”, he said. These complaints would be sent to the fee committee for further action, he said. In July, the committee on the fixation of fees for self-financing professional colleges, headed by Justice R Pongiappan, recommended no increase in tuition fees for MBBS and BDS courses. The committee fixed up to ₹4.50 lakh towards tuition and special fees for students joining through the govt quota in selffinancing colleges, ₹13.5 lakh for students joining through the management quota and ₹24.5 lakh for the NRI quota. 

For private medical universities, the fee is higher. “Colleges asked for a fee increase this year, but the committee declined. The prescribed fee does not include hostel, mess and transportation charges. Colleges can charge separately for this,” Subramanian said. However, colleges could not make a killing out of this, he said. “If the charges are unreasonable, parents can file complaints along with the required evidence and documents. We will urge the committee to initiate action against the colleges,” he said. 

Health secretary, two former state university VCs, DME and a CA are members of the committee. Parents and student counsellors say this may have no effect. “Last year, more than 20 complaints were filed before the committee. We have not heard of any action,” said student counsellor Manickavel Arumugam. “If the state is serious, it must ask colleges to declare the fee in the prospectus and on the webpages. This will allow parents and students to make informed choices during the admission process,” he said.  Most parents agreed. “We expected an additional fee of may be ₹1-₹2 lakh. We were surprised when it was almost equal to the tuition fee,” said a parent whose child was allotted a seat in a medical college in Namakkal. “We paid a prescribed fee of ₹4.5 lakh and an additional ₹4 lakh. They insisted that it should be in cash and haven’t given us any receipt. We paid because we did not want to lose the seat,” he said. Another college in Chennai, which started admissions this year, charged parents ₹3.50 lakh as an additional fee.