AFRC to tighten noose on private Engg colleges

To fix new fee structure soon

Raipur, February 08, 2010

The Admission and Fees Regulatory Committee (AFRC) is preparing to tighten the noose on private engineering colleges by fixing new fee structure for session 20010-11. According to information, the committee will implement new fee structure by the February end.

Since there was no regulatory body to control the fee structure of the private engineering colleges in the past, the management of individual institutes were exploiting students by charging inordinate fee.

However, when the parents and students across the country protested against this monopolistic attitude of the private engineering colleges, the Supreme Court intervened and asked all the state governments to constitute AFRC to control such institutes.

The state government constituted five-member AFRC which is chaired by retired High Court Justice VK Shrivastava. The members of the committee are – Director Technical Education MR Khan, Dr IM Shukla, Advocate B Gopakumar and Chartered Accountant Santosh Bhamkar.

The new fee structure for the session 2009-10 could not be decided because a number of private engineering colleges did not agree with the AFRC proposal. Eventually, the students had to pay fee according to the structure decided by the individual institutes.

The AFRC member MR Khan informed that considering dissent among few colleges pertaining to fee structure, the committee had invited them to resolve the issue through joint discussions. However, the representatives of only few institutes reached to the committee to express their concerns. Later, the AFRC announced that February 13, 2010 would be last date for final hearing of all the claims and objections of the private colleges regarding fixation of new fee structure. Khan said the committee would hardly take a fortnight’s time in deciding new structure after February 13.

When contacted, a number of students and parents felt that if the new fee structure would be announced before Pre Engineering Test (PET) and All India Engineering Entrance Exam (AIEEE) which are usually held in April and May then it would be easy for them to pick the right institute during counselling.

In the session 2009-10, the tuition fee in the private colleges ranged from Rs 17,420 to Rs 22,890 for each semester. Besides, the students had to pay Rs 1500 in each semester as a development fee. While all the institutes mandatorily charged Rs 1500 as one time caution money. In addition, the institutes had also charged hefty amount from the students on the name of different types of development funds as well as for providing a host of other facilities to them. Some colleges have framed strange rules to generate extra fund. They provide laptops to the students during admission and take additional amount ranging from Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000.