COIMBATORE: Tamil Nadu State fee fixation committee for professional colleges has allowed 24 private engineering colleges to hike the fee for management quota seats to Rs 1.35 lakh for non-accredited courses and Rs 1.40 lakh for accredited courses. In June 2017, the panel headed by Justice NV Balasubramanian fixed the fee for management quota engineering seats at Rs 85,000 per year for non-accredited courses and Rs 87,000 for accredited courses. Now, they have been hiked by Rs 50,000 and Rs 53,000.
This fee includes tuition fee, admission fee, special fee, laboratory/computer/internet fee, library fee, sports fee, maintenance and amenities fee, extracurricular activities fee and other recurring expenditure.
In addition to the above annual fee, these 24 colleges were also permitted to collect Rs 15,000 per student as placement and training fee subject to the condition that they submit details of expenditure towards the same.
Reacting to the development, the chairman of a private college said many more colleges are likely to seek a fee hike in the coming year citing these 24 institutions as an example.
Managements of these 24 private colleges have urged the fee fixation committee to hike the fee considering maximum fee fixed by the Sri Krishna Committee constituted by the AICTE and fee fixed in the neighbouring states. College managements also argued that to prepare students to meet the industry requirements and to get good employment, institutions have to provide various types of value-added courses related to branch of study like skill development programs, communication development programs and placement and training program.
The Sri Krishna Committee has fixed maximum fee for BE/BTech as Rs 1,58,300 in type- X cities which included Chennai and Coimbatore, Rs 1,50,500 in type-Y cities which included Erode, Madurai, Salem, Trichy, Tirunelveli and Tiruppur and Rs 1,44,900 in type-Z cities, based on the central pay commission classification of cities.
The committee to enquire and inspect educational institutions on excess fee has warned self financing colleges not to collect fee beyond the fee prescribed by the fee fixation committee.