‘Med colleges quoting fee as high as Rs 44L’

A few medical colleges have demanded the fee as high as Rs 44 lakh for the current academic year, according to the fee fixation committee.

Speaking here on Thursday, Justice Shylendra Kumar, chairman, fee regulation committee, said that medical colleges in the state have a fee structure varying anywhere between Rs 9.8 lakh to Rs 44 lakh, this academic year.

Meanwhile, for the dental course, colleges have quoted the fee as low as Rs 3 lakh. The highest that a dental college is allowed to charge is Rs 19.30 lakh per student per year.

This year, the committee had permitted an 8% hike to the previous year's fee of the colleges.

Engineering colleges, however, have quoted fee as low as Rs 50,000, he said. The highest fee charged by an engineering college is Rs 4.45 lakh. One-third of the colleges have also sought a lower fee.

"Demand put forth by most of the professional colleges are unreasonably high. One of the private colleges had literally written to us saying they had 'jacked up' the fee. Truth comes out in unexpected ways," he said.

The committee is yet to send the annual fee fixation cap for Ayush and pharmaceutical colleges. He said that a maximum hike of only 8% is permitted even in these cases.

For NRI students

The committee, has, for the first time fixed a fee for non-resident Indian students as well. While in case of medical and dental colleges, the fee would be ten times higher than what is being charged for local students, for engineering it would be four times higher than that of the local students.

The committee has recommended that the excess fee collected should be kept in a separate bank account and later be used for the purpose of providing education concession for underprivileged and SC/ST students.