No more revision of college fees this year, says FRA

ONLY MEDICAL AND DENTAL INSTITUTES CAN SEND FEE REVISION PLEAS FOR 20192020

MUMBAI: With the last date to admit students for the academic year 2018-19 slotted for August 31, the Fee Regulating Authority (FRA) on Thursday has announced that the body will not entertain any more fee revision proposals for the academic year. However, medical and dental institutes are free to send their fee revision proposals for 2019-20 on or before October 31, 2018.

“Many colleges have already finished applying for upward revision of fees for 2018-19, and the appropriate approvals were announced earlier this year. Since the academic year is already in session now, we will not allow any fee revision in the middle of an academic year,” said Manik Gursal, secretary, FRA. The decision was taken in a meeting held at the FRA office on Wednesday and a circular was released on Thursday.

Established in 2004, the FRA or Shulka Niyamat Samiti – earlier known as Shikshan Shulka Samiti – is responsible for regulating fees of all the unaided private professional colleges in the state. Every year, colleges submit proposals for changing their fee 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.

In March, the FRA had released a circular announcing the annual fees of several colleges for 2018-19. “Many colleges had already applied for fee revision and this circular only means that remaining institutes can’t apply for upward revision of fees to avoid confusion for students in the middle of the academic year. It’s a good decision,” said the parent of one of the medical students.

In another move, the FRA has also decided to waive off the processing fee for medical institutes applying for fee revision proposal for the academic year 2019-20. “After considering the sufficient balances to meet budgeted expenditure, it has been resolved that in respect of the fee proposals submitted by institutes for 2019-20, the earlier charged processing fee of 0.05% of the total fee proposed would be abolished,” said the circular released on Thursday. It further states that this concession is only applicable to proposals for 2019-20.