The fee revision for the engineering and professional colleges in the State has been stalled due to delay in renewal of the Fee Structure Committee’s (FSC) tenure.
The fees of the private engineering and professional colleges are revised after three years. But the colleges who are due for revision of their fee structure, will not get the final notification before one month’s time. The tenure of FSC is renewed by the Supreme Court every year as its clause in the Odisha Professional Education (OPEA) Act, 2007, is sub-judice. Additional Secretary of Directorate of Technical Education and Training (DTET) Ratnakar Rout said since the FSC’s tenure is yet to be renewed by the apex court, the revision of the fees will be delayed. He also added that the renewal order is expected to arrive by next week.
The admission process to the engineering and professional colleges will conclude by the end of this month. The college representatives wanted the fee revision notification to be declared prior to the commencement of 2013-14 academic session. “If we implement the revised fee in the midst of an academic session, it will create confusion among the students and their parents. Majority of the students will not accept the revised fee after the admissions are over,” said one of the college representatives.
An official of FSC said they were in the process of analysing the documents of the individual colleges. The processing of the documentation is expected to take a month’s time to be completed. By that time, the admissions into these colleges will be over.
The report submitted by the FSC will be reviewed by the State Government which is the final authority to decide if hike in existing fees is needed or not. For the past few years, fee has been hiked by around 15 per cent.