Institutes seeking fee revision will have to submit hard copy of proposal: Maharashtra FRA

After not working for months due to need of a new team, newly appointed members of the Maharashtra Fee Regulating Authority (FRA) recently got together to discuss the need for better mechanisms in place

After not working for months due to need of a new team, newly appointed members of the Maharashtra Fee Regulating Authority (FRA) recently got together to discuss the need for better mechanisms in place. For starters, the authority has discussed the need for institute fee proposals to be submitted in hard copies along with the online submission of soft copies. “Since there is no authenticity of documents submitted in online portal, three hard copies of the fee proposal will be asked from the institute along with relevant online proposal,” stated a document shared by FRA as part of the minutes of the meeting made public last week.

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FRA has also formed separate sub-committees to look into grievance redressal and to determine norms for charging fees by unaided private institutes in the 2022-23 academic year. In a statement released by the authority recently, they also suggested that they might charge processing fee from institutes seeking approval or an upward revision of fees to maintain routine expenses covered by FRA.

“The regulating authority might charge processing fee for conducting Common Entrance Test (CET) and charges for fixation of fees, etc., as maybe decided by the authorities. The processing fee maybe be decided considering the day-to-day expenditure including salaries, allowances, administrative expenses, honorarium, infrastructural expenses in pursuance of its function,” said a statement released by the authority last week. It further states that the processing fee can range from a minimum of ₹15,000 to 0.05% of the annual fee charged by the institute, whichever is higher.

Established in 2004, FRA is a quasi-judicial body responsible for regulating fees of all unaided private professional colleges in the state. Every year, institutes submit proposals for changing their fee structure to the authority, which considers a number of indicators such as nature of the course, number of students, teaching and non-teaching staff, infrastructure and other facilities at the college before fixing the fees.

In March this year, the term of the previous members of FRA had ended and the new members took over only last month. “The newly formed sub-committees have one month’s time to submit their recommendations to FRA, following which permanent decisions will be taken and shared with the institutes,” said a senior FRA member.