Move for parity in fees

Amid the gloom of Mandal II, the All India Council of Technical Education hopes to bring some cheer to students seeking to take up technical courses. The council would like students to opt for a course of their choice, in any technical institution, without having to go about comparing fees. For if the AICTE has its way, there will be a similar fee structure for a particular course all over the country.

Published on: May 8, 2006, 13:53:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Amid the gloom of Mandal II, the All India Council of Technical Education hopes to bring some cheer to students seeking to take up technical courses. The council would like students to opt for a course of their choice, in any technical institution, without having to go about comparing fees. For if the AICTE has its way, there will be a similar fee structure for a particular course all over the country.

A committee to examine fee structure in technical institutes in various states and come out with a rational module has been constituted. Headed by Justice (retd) Ranganath Mishra, the committee is expected to submit its report by June. "We expect to enforce the recommendations of the committee before the start of the next academic year," R.A. Vadav, vice-chairperson of AICTE, said.

Sources say, the need to have guidelines for fixing college fees was felt because of the increase in complaints regarding exorbitant fees charged by private institutions and number of court cases related to that. The problem of disparity in fee structures has reached such proportions that the issue was raised at the national conference of deemed universities that concluded on Friday.

Officials complained that some institutes even charged more than double the amount charged by other institutes for the same course.

"The Mishra committee will suggest a formula for examining the fee structure. There will be a price component for each facility like library, computers, tutorials, sports and so on. This will help in rationalising the fees structure," a council official said.

Fees for engineering courses in private colleges range anywhere between Rs 50,000 pa to Rs 2 lakh. In many cases there is no rationale behind the extremely high fees charged.

"In most cases one ends up paying for the reputation of an institute," an official commented. Though the AICTE claims it has no direct control over fees, which are regulatted by state fee committees, educationists blame the council for 'gross commercialisation' of education.

"The AICTE is not only responsible for the quality of a course but also for the fees charged. It can't shirk its responsibility and blame the state committees," an educationist said.

However, the blame game may finally be over once the guidelines are formulated.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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