The students seeking admission into professional colleges are taken for a ride by the State Government this year as finalising fee structure became a travesty once again.

The Supreme Court had given a ruling that admissions in professional colleges should be over by June 30. But notification could not be released without proper fee structure. As EAMCET counselling is expected to begin from June 17 if the fee structure is finalized before June 12. The Admission and Fee Regulation Committee (AFRC) is yet to finalise the fee structure in engineering, B Pharmacy, MBA and MCA courses. The fee proposals given by the engineering college managements are only source for fixing new fee structure. The students are in a quandary as they do not know how much they have to pay for the college they chose to join.

There was 300% hike in fees in professional colleges in 2012-2013. About 67 engineering colleges hiked their fees from Rs 51,800 to Rs 1.05 lakh and 18 colleges fixed the fees at Rs 50,200 and 578 colleges at Rs 35,000. When there were protests from the students, the Government appointed a Task Force which will inspect the professional colleges and fix the fee structure taking various parameters like infrastructure, lab and teaching facilities into consideration.

The Task force completed inspection of 686 engineering colleges and found out that 90% of them are poor in infrastructure and other facilities. The teaching staff is not being paid AICTE sixth PRC scales and the non-teaching staff, ninth PRC scales. Since there is no qualified teaching staff, teaching is being done by those who are not qualified. Inspection of colleges, offering courses like MBA, MCA, and Pharmacy was yet to be completed.

The AFRC which looks into admissions and fees of 3500 professional colleges, gave a notification in December last year, to send proposals for fixing fees , but nothing has been done even though the colleges are about to open .

The AFRC is unable to complete its task of fixing the fees because it has no legal sanctity. Succumbing to the pressures from the college managements, the Government has not brought out an act to make it legal. The State Higher Education Council sent proposals that there should be more than one legal official and 45 employees for AFRC to function efficiently, but there has been no response from the Government.

The Government has acted non-seriously leaving thousands of students in distress. The student does not know how much he has to pay until the day of admission and will not have enough time to gather financial resources.

-Hyderabad, Sakshipost