Students want TISS to waive outstanding fees for the poor
Students at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, are demanding a waiver of outstanding fees for those belonging to marginal sections like scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST), other backward classes (OBC) and economically weaker sections (EWS).
For the graduating batch of 2018-20, the final date for paying the tuition fee, dining fee and hostel fee is May 31. However, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic that has affected many families, the Progressive Students’ Forum (PSF) at TISS has claimed that students are not in a position to pay their outstanding fees. Students eligible for the Government of India Post-matric Scholarship (GOIPMS) have not received their scholarship amount from the central government, said PSF in a letter.
The forum has also sought a fee waiver of 50% for the students not falling under these categories but are unable to pay the fees.
A source in the institute’s administration, however, indicated that any kind of waiver was not possible. The institute has been incurring deficits to the tune of ₹9 crore annually, according to its annual reports. “We have raised over ₹2.15 crore as student aids in 2019-20. Waiving off outstanding fees would mean waiving off around ₹80 lakh, which is not feasible for the institute,” said
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the official.
GROUP CONDEMNED OVER WEBINAR
An independent student forum at the TISS campus, Democratic Secular Students’ Forum, has come under criticism for holding
a webinar on “five things the youth must do to become an intellectual Kshatriya”. Asha Banu, dean student affairs at TISS, said that since the seminar was happening on social media, the institute administration had no jurisdiction over the same.