Inflation to push up fees of courses

MUMBAI: Students planning to enrol in a professional course in Maharashtra for the next academic year should expect a steeper than usual hike in college fees.

This is because the fees fixed by the state's Fees Regulating Authority (FRA) will now account for inflation during the course of the academic programmes. FRA has decided to use an 'inflation equalisation factor' while calculating a fee, which will increase the fee amount by 1% to 4.25%, depending upon the duration of the course.

Established in 2004, the FRA is responsible for regulating the fees of all the unaided private professional colleges, including medical, engineering, management and law institutes, in the state. Every year, colleges submit proposals for changing their fees structure to the authority, which considers a number of indicators such as nature of the course, number of students, teaching and non-teaching staff, infrastructure and other facilities at the college before fixing the fees. According to FRA members, colleges are incurring a small loss as they are required to charge a uniform annual fee from a student during the entire duration of the course, even though the expenditure on these students keeps increasing due to inflation. The additional fees will help colleges tide over these losses.

"The fees at a college is calculated by dividing the institute's expenditure by the number of students in a course. However, only those who are admitted to the first year of the course, pay this fee amount. Rest of the students pay the older, smaller fees," said an FRA member.

The equalisation factor will allow for a one time increase in the fees – at the start of the academic programme. Students will still have to pay the same annual fee throughout the course.