Govt to hike tech college fee - Student leader protests 'arbitrary' decision

The College of Engineering and Technology in Bhubaneswar, which will also see a hike in fees

Bhubaneswar, June 13: The state government is all set to enhance fee in at least 128 technical institutes from this academic year.

These include 38 BTech colleges, 33 MBA colleges, 30 MCA colleges, 15 BPharm college, three PGDM colleges and five MAM (Master of Applied Management) colleges.

These colleges apart, fee will be hiked in one architecture college, one ayurvedic college, one medical college and one dental college, a senior official of the fee structure committee, U.K. Mallick told The Telegraph.

The fee structure committee, constituted under the Odisha Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fee) Act, revises the fees every three years on the basis of audited accounts of the colleges.

“The fees have been revised for colleges whose fee structure was fixed during 2010-11 academic year,” said Mallick.

While the proposal for fee hike is still pending with the state government, there have been allegations that the committee has proposed the hikes without a single field visit to any of these colleges.

“The report of the committee is arbitrary and irrational. The recommendation for the fee hike has been made by the committee without any field visit,” alleged BPUT Students’ Protection Council president Biplab Mohanty, who obtained the information through the RTI Act.

On March 25 last year, the technical education department had constituted a fee structure sub-committee following cases of student suicides in engineering colleges for allegedly not being able to pay exorbitant capitation fee charged by these institutions.

The committee was entrusted the responsibility to determine the fee structure of private engineering colleges after studying their infrastructure facilities and faculty. It had been asked to conduct physical inspection of at least 25 per cent of these institutions.