If the All India Council of Technical Education has its way, it will charge the same fee for courses it runs in various technical institutes of the country. AICTE wants to come up with a rational fee module to examine the fee structure of these courses.
If the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has its way, it will charge the same fee for courses it runs in various technical institutes of the country.
AICTE, which wants to come up with a rational fee module, has constituted a committee to examine the fee structure of these courses. Headed by Justice (retired) 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 session,” RA Vadav, Vice-Chairperson, AICTE, said. Meanwhile, sources say, the need to draft guidelines for fixing fees for colleges was felt because of an increasing number of complaints, and court cases in this regard.
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AICTE officials quoted institutes that are charging more than double the fee for the same courses.
Fees for engineering courses in private sector ranges between Rs 50,000 per annum and Rs 2 lakh. Though AICTE claims it has no direct control over the fees charged, but educationists blame the council for ‘gross commercialisation’ of education.
SMART BOX Rational fee module • AICTE wants a uniform fee structure in all technical institutes across the country • It has appointed a committee to constitute a rational fee module • The committee will submit its report by June this year • It’s recommendations will be enforced by the next academic session • The decision for a uniform fee structure was taken following many complaints
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.
