BENGALURU: Demonetisation of `1,000 and `500 currency notes will have a big impact on education institutions, especially on medical colleges, say experts.
Experts say demonetization will have an impact on donations and capitation fee at medical colleges.
Speaking to Express, Dr Vasanth Kumar, former registrar of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS), Bengaluru, who also worked as principal of many private medical colleges, said, “Donation will come down 100 per cent in medical education. Now, institutions will have to provide a receipt for all the money they collect from parents and even parents will have to ask for a receipt. I wish the government makes it mandatory for education institutions to transact only through cheques and no cash transactions should be allowed.”
Dr M K Panduranga Setty, chairman of Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges Association said, “Not only medical colleges, any institution where black money is accepted will be hit. I welcome the decision of the government.”
It may be recalled that large sums of cash was seized in recent Income Tax raids on various medical colleges soon after admissions for the current academic year were completed.“The Income Tax department seized over `43 crore cash from Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences recently. All that was black money which was collected in the form of donation. Colleges will now have to reduce the amount of donation for seats now,” said a former vice-chancellor of RGUHS.
“I still wonder what these high-profile medical institutions will do with the black money which they have now. The government’s move must have taught them a lesson. They should stop treating education as a business,” the former vice -chancellor added.
Dr N Prabhu Dev, former vice-chancellor of Bangalore University and a former director of Jayadeva Institute of Cardio-Vascular Sciences, said, “This is definitely going to have a big impact on donations and also on management quota seats in medical colleges. As one cannot pay anything in black, even colleges cannot collect large sums. The entire system of medical education and fee structure is going to rationalise. And this is the time for the Union government to amend rules and regulations for medical admission.”
Cost of a medical seat
Professional education is one area where parents pay any amount of money to get a seat for their children. As per information available from various medical colleges in the state, post-graduate (MD/MS) seats of medical courses costs up to `3 crore. Specializations like Radiology, Dermatology, Orthopaedics, Gynaecology and Neurosurgery cost anywhere between `1 crore and `3 crore.
Even under-graduate medical seats under management quota are sold for several lakhs.