Students of a engineering college in the city have alleged that the college management has asked them to pay 25 per cent of their prospective salaries in order to write their final semester exam. However, the college has denied this allegation.
The students are now running from pillar to post, calling their parents and friends to arrange the money that will ‘buy’ them their hall tickets. The students claimed this oral announcement came two days before the exams and put them under a lot of stress.
“We received our placement letters which say that the company is interested in hiring us sometime in January. But it was only on Monday that we were told that we will have to pay 25 per cent of the salary that the company has offered us if we want our hall tickets. For me, that will come to `7,500 which I will have to arrange within two days, if I have to write my exam,” said Suresh Kumar (name changed on request).
The students wondered what will happen if, like a year or so later, companies decide that they do not want to hire them anymore. “Will the college pay the money back? Will they help us get another job?”
This is not all. If a student has more than one job offer, then he/she has to pay 25 per cent of the salaries offered by each company regardless of the fact that a student would take up only one job, they claimed.
“It is not like we are not paying our placement fees. We already had to pay `3,500 as training for placement, where instructors from TIME trained us. We do not know what they are going to do with the money. But I’ve heard from friends that seniors too had to pay,” he said.
Allegation Denied
However, the college denied the allegations. Dr Manjunath, Principal of New Horizon College of Engineering (NHCE), Marathahalli, said the college is not demanding any money from the students for their hall tickets.
“These are baseless allegations. Our management will not do something like this and I would know if something like this happened,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about what you are saying. I am the Chief Supervisor of Examinations and I am 100 per cent sure that this is not at all true,” Dr Manjunath added.
Crosscheck
When Express checked with former students of the college, it was found that this was not first time this was being done. Sumanthi (name changed) paid Rs 8,000 in 2010 to get her marks card.
“When we asked the management what the money was for, they told us that we were getting placed through the college and so we had to pay. I had to struggle to get the money. We tried to fight the management and raise the issue. We spoke to seniors, lectureres and they said we had no option, but to pay the money. Our futures were at stake here and we did not want to jeopardise it,” she said, “So we paid up.”