Parents of students who are going to join engineering colleges in Telangana this year may need to shell out more, as several unaided private professional colleges in the state are demanding a 15 to 20 percent hike in the fee structure for various courses.
The proposal came up for discussion at a meeting of the Telangana Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (TAFRC) on Saturday, but a final decision by the committee is yet to be made.
For the academic year 2019-20, the colleges lobbied for a 20 percent hike for courses with fee below Rs 50,000 and a 15 percent hike for courses with fee above Rs 50,000. However, this would only be considered a temporary fee hike, until TAFRC issues detailed guidelines regarding the fee structure.
While student organisations and parents associations have been urging authorities to not heed to the demand of the education institutions, media reports suggest that TAFRC might pass orders in favour of the fee hike on Monday.
The issue came to light after the management of a group of private colleges moved the Telangana High Court to approve a fee hike and collect the revised fees that they had proposed. The court observed that as TAFRC had not yet zeroed in on a fee structure, the management could hike the fee until the regulatory body established its guidelines.
“Now that the Committee has been constituted, the fee structure will be fixed with priority given to the colleges that moved the court,” a senior TAFRC official was quoted as saying.
In March this year, government engineering colleges in Telangana also planned to approach the State Higher Education Council demanding a fee hike. At the time, the colleges said that the fee structure had not been increased in the last 13 years, and claimed that they hadn’t been able to revamp their infrastructure due to this. This, they said, had hit their national rankings.