More than 90 per cent of the 678 engineering colleges in the state have submitted reports with inflated figures to the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (AFRC) with the hope of enhancing the fee structure for engineering courses.
The AFRC has been constituted by the government to revise the tuition fee charged by engineering colleges once in three years. The AFRC had sought reports from the colleges on the expenditure they are incurring on students so that it could finalise the fee structure for each college.
Though it has more or less completed the exercise, it is yet to submit the report to the government for want of which counselling for admission into these colleges for this academic year is kept on hold.
According to sources, when AFRC began the exercise of fee revision some time ago, found that the reports submitted by them were grossly exaggerated.
For instance one college had showed that its total spending was Rs 3 crore (2012-13)which is an increase of 3000 per cent from Rs 10 lakh it incurred in 2011-12.
Another college submitted its reports saying that it had spent Rs 38 lakh only on gardening. Another college in Hyderabad which paid only Rs 12,000 a month as salary for the staff in 2011-12, said that it had increased its salaries to Rs 1 lakh.
The colleges have made the attempt only to enhance the tuition fee. In about 678 colleges, officials said that less than 50 colleges have submitted proper reports and over 200 colleges did not submit any reports so far and over 400 colleges gave reports with inflated figures.
The student organisations say that the state government can recommend to universities to disaffiliate such colleges for misleading the AFRC. Then there is the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) which can de-recognise such colleges, but it is also not being done.
Principal Secretary, Higher Education Ajay Mishra says that though the college managements had submitted exaggerated accounts of expenditure, the AFRC was not overwhelmed by the figures and finalised the fee commensurate with infrastructure and spending as assessed by task force committees last year.
“Our job is to finalise tuition fee commensurate with actual spending by colleges on students. As regards taking action, it is up to the AICTE since it gave permission to the colleges,’’ he said.
Agreeing with the fact that the government can file criminal cases, he, however, said it was long and tedious process and a decision for this has to be taken by the government, implying that it should be a political decision.