JOIN USMinister defends hike in BE fees, says inflation merited it
Minister for Higher Education R V Deshpande on Friday defended the hike in fees for undergraduate engineering courses by stating that it had been done taking into consideration inflation and requirements of colleges to provide quality education.
Speaking to reporters, Deshpande pointed out that there had been no hike in fees for undergraduate engineering courses for the last three years. “The cumulative inflation for the last three years has been 40 per cent. Besides, colleges have to pay AICTE-scale salaries to the faculty”, he said.
The higher education department on Wednesday signed a consensual agreement with managements of private engineering colleges on seat sharing and fee structure. Government quota students would have to pay 20-24 per cent more fees compared with last year.
The minister said the government would reimburse the fees of SC/ST and category-1 students. The Karnataka Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fee) Act, 2006, incorporating an amendment to include the consensual agreement between the government and private college managements on seat sharing and fee structure, will be implemented from the academic year 2015-16 onwards.
The amended legislation will also have a clause to derecognise colleges which do not follow rules or demand excess fees, he said. According to the minister, no professional colleges should keep a profit margin of more than eight per cent while running their institutions. The government will soon decide whether to get the bill passed through the legislature or take the ordinance route, he said. The government will also consider constituting squads to monitor whether colleges are charging excess fees, he added.
Jnana Sangama
The higher education department will soon launch Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) using cloud technology in teaching-learning process.
Named ‘Jnana Sangama’, the initiative will provide online content, including text and video presentations by teachers, that can be accessed using any device.
International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Bengaluru) is providing the technical mentorship to universities to adopt the project, he added.
DH News Service