Girl students in aided degree colleges to get fee waiver

The State government has decided to extend fee waiver facility for girl students studying in aided degree colleges, Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande has said.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Deshpande said the fee waiver scheme was already in place for girl students studying in government degree colleges. The fee waiver scheme (waiver of tuition and lab fees) has been extended to aided colleges from the academic year 2014-15, he added.

A total of 1.25 lakh girl students in 321 government aided colleges will benefit and the scheme will cost the State exchequer Rs 25 crore per annum, Deshpande said.

The minister said the Department of Collegiate Education would frame rules to recruit 1,298 lecturers for government first grade colleges by conducting a Common Entrance Test. The task of conducting the entrance test has been entrusted to the Karnataka Examinations Authority and the process will commence on September 15, he added.

The government will soon allow aided colleges to utilise 50 per cent of the fees collected from the students. Hitherto, all the fees collected went to the government.

Deshpande said the department had installed biometric attendan­ce monitoring system to monitor the attendance of teaching and non-teaching faculty in 310 of the 411 government degree colleges.

 The Educational Management Infor- mation System, a web-based online system installed in gover -nment degree colleges helped in monitoring the coverage of syllabus by the teachers.

He said as many as 11,476 guest lecturers had been deputed to 411 government degree colleges through online counselling system. Tele-education classes will be held in 27 colleges in the Gulbarga region soon, he added.