Colleges oppose online fee system
Managements to approach High Court
Engineering college managements have decided to approach the AP High Court against the online fee fixation system introduced by the Admi-ssions and Fee Regulatory Committee for professional courses for the period from 2013-14 to 2015-16. The colleges have termed the fee fixation “defective”.
The Consortium of Engineering and Professional Colleges’ Managements Association of AP, which held its emergency general body meeting on Sunday, demanded that AFRC revise the guidelines immediately.
Speaking to reporters, consortium chairman Nimmatoori Ramesh, president Nova Krishna Rao, secretary-general K.V.K. Rao, working president R. Pradeep Reddy and general secretary K. Sunil Kumar demanded that the AFRC revise the parameters that were sought from the colleges for fee fixation, terming them “unscientific and impractical”.
“The new system has been devised to fix fees for the next three years based on the income and expenditure statements of colleges during 2012-13. The AFRC has conveniently ignored the fact that college expenditure rises yearly due to salary enhancements, new appointments, infrastructure development and for other quality improvement initiatives,” said Mr Ramesh.
Mr Krishna Rao said the fee fixation process has been devised so erroneously that it would be difficult to secure a fee of `15,000 per annum even for top colleges like CBIT and Srinidhi, while the middle-rung and normal colleges would get a fee of less than `10,000.
Last year, the AFRC fixed the highest fee of `1.05 lakh per annum for CBIT, while the minimum fee in other colleges was `35, 000. It had recently issued a notification asking professional colleges to submit fee proposals online from February 1 to 20 for engineering, pharmacy, MBA, MCA courses etc.
Mr K.V.K. Rao said conspiracy by the state government and AFRC to significantly cut down fees to reduce the fee reimbursement burden will throw quality to the wind. He said the standards in tech colleges will come down if the AFRC goes ahead with its online fee fixation system under pressure from the state government.