The fee for technical post graduate courses at Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) is expected to go up as the university plans to also include the cost of Aakash-2 tablets. The tablets will be available for students from this academic year.
Vice-Chancellor of VTU H Maheshappa said an allocation for provision of the tablets will be made in the university’s budget, which will be finalised later this month. As of now, he said, the plan is to provide these tablets to final-year PG students for free.
“We have written to the Ministry of Human Resources Development expressing our interest to provide Aakash tablets for PG students. It will be free for the final year students, while we will make it mandatory for the first year students to buy them. We plan to introduce this component in the fee structure,” the VC said.
The Android-based tablets, available for students at a discounted price of `1,130, were launched by President Pranab Mukherjee in November last year. Powered by a Cortex A8 1GHz processor, the Aakash-2 comes with 512MB RAM, 4GB memory, multi-touch screen and WiFi connectivity.
The Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) fee in M Tech is `63,590, while the fee is `23,590 for government and aided colleges.
The Technical Students’ Federation has urged the VTU to expedite procurement of the tablets for the benefit of students. Director for Technical Education H U Talwar said Aakash-2 tablets will be provided to students from government engineering colleges based on the funds released by the state government.
The state Budget also states that 1.47 lakh SC/ST students who have secured more than 60 per cent marks would be supplied with Aakash tablets in lieu of cash incentive of `93.94 crore.