Private medical institutes in the state will be allowed to charge fees as per their old structure for the upcoming academic year 2018-19, said an official statement by the state’s Fee Regulating Authority (FRA).
The decision comes barely a week after FRA received flak for directing all private medical institutes in Maharashtra to charge a common fee across all quotas.
In a meeting held in the city on Tuesday, the FRA decided that institutes will be allowed to charge up to three times the regular fees for seats in the institutional quota and up to five times under the NRI quota. The decision, however, comes with a rider.
An FRA member said they plan to cut down the fees for academic year 2019-20 to make up for ‘additional fees’ charged by colleges for management and NRI quota in the current and previous academic years. “The extra fees charged by colleges will be considered an income. This amount will be deducted from the colleges’ expenditure to decide fees for students,” he said, adding that the colleges have agreed to this arrangement.
Last week, the FRA had released a circular addressed to all private medical colleges, asking them to charge common fees for all their seats under various quotas. An association representing private medical institutes had requested the state medical education minister to direct FRA to roll back their circular, and instead allow them to charge five times the normal fees to NRI students. FRA had sought time to reconsider their decision on the issue. Amongst the grievances put forward by the private medical institutes was the need for FRA to consider the interest towards loan borrowed by the institute to raise infrastructure and maintenance, consideration of hospital deficit and development charges, amongst others. Apart from one grievance which the FRA agreed to consider, the other grievances will be looked into depending on individual applications, said an official.
{{/usCountry}}Last week, the FRA had released a circular addressed to all private medical colleges, asking them to charge common fees for all their seats under various quotas. An association representing private medical institutes had requested the state medical education minister to direct FRA to roll back their circular, and instead allow them to charge five times the normal fees to NRI students. FRA had sought time to reconsider their decision on the issue. Amongst the grievances put forward by the private medical institutes was the need for FRA to consider the interest towards loan borrowed by the institute to raise infrastructure and maintenance, consideration of hospital deficit and development charges, amongst others. Apart from one grievance which the FRA agreed to consider, the other grievances will be looked into depending on individual applications, said an official.
{{/usCountry}}“The FRA has decided to consider the expenditure incurred on account of payment of interest. However, keeping in view the interest of students, the institute will have to decide whether the interest incurred is towards loan borrowed for revenue expenditure, or for other purposes,” said an official from FRA.
Dr Pravin Shingare, director of Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) said that the most important rule that all institutes need to adhere to is to avoid any last minute changes to their fee structure. “If a college feels they want to charge only three times the regular fees for NRI candidate instead of five times, we will allow that too.”
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