The University Grants Commission (UGC) has slashed the recurring non-salary grant of Allahabad University (AU) by 40%, a move that has now forced the university authorities to think of revising existing fees to meet the shortfall.
“Now we have no option left other than to garner our own resources. We will have to start new courses having new fee structures and at the same time revise existing fee structure for various undergraduate and postgraduate courses”, said AU’s vice chancellor professor Sangita Srivastava.
For the past many years UGC has been constantly asking universities including AU to raise its own resources to meet the expenses.
AU officials admit that the fourth oldest university of the country would now face problems in meeting expenses related to paying electricity bills, house, water tax, while undertaking building repairs and maintenance, housekeeping, security, contractual engagements. “Hiring guest faculty, procuring journals and books in the library etc too could be a problem as expenses for these heads are met by the grant under recurring non-salary head,” AU officials said.
The slash in recurring non-salary grant is going to hurt all the more to AU whose annual electricity expenses are pretty high, and it also has electricity dues of around ₹7 crore of past years that it is yet to clear.
{{/usCountry}}The slash in recurring non-salary grant is going to hurt all the more to AU whose annual electricity expenses are pretty high, and it also has electricity dues of around ₹7 crore of past years that it is yet to clear.
{{/usCountry}}AU public relations officer (PRO), Jaya Kapoor said, “Now, AU is exploring all avenues in order to meet the shortfall that threatens to cripple the day to day functioning of the university and its associated institutions.”
The fees of various courses at AU have not been raised over the past three decades. The annual fee for UG courses at AU ranges from ₹800-1200 and for PG courses, it is from ₹1300-2000.
How low the fee of courses at AU are can be gauged from the fact that annual fee at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, also a central university in UP, is more than double than that of AU. For pursuing BA at BHU, a student has to pay ₹2,407 per year while for BSc a student has to shell out ₹3167 per annum. Similarly, for MA, the yearly fee is ₹3,157 while that for MSc is ₹3,557.