Central universities may hike tuition fees

NEW DELHI: Even as the ministry of human resource development made changes to accommodate the salary demands of protesting faculty in centrally-funded technical institutions such as the IITs and IIMs, it has asked all central education institutions to ���make efforts to generate additional resources��� given the constraint of resources. This could mean higher tuition and other fees for students across central educational institutions.

In an official communication dated September 12, the higher education secretary RP Agarwal writes that given the ���mandatory cuts in non salary expenditure��� arising from constraint of resources, it is ���expected��� that the institutions would generate additional resources through ���gradual revision of tuition fees, levy of user fees, withdrawal of hostel subsidies and other measures.���

This suggestion to central education institutions, which includes central universities, IITs and IIMs, is apropos a ministry of finance order which stipulates the ���urgent need for rationalisation of expenditure and optimisation of available resources in order to ensure adequate resources for meeting the development needs of the social and infrastructure sectors.���

For the current fiscal there will be a mandatory cut of 10 per cent in non-Plan expenditure covering domestic and foreign travel expenses, publications, professional services, advertising and publicity,office expenses. Other non-plan expenditure will have to take a mandatory 5 per cent cut. However, neither salaries nor pension will be touched.