Other colleges charge up to 20x more than revised JNU hostel fees

NEW DELHI: Agitating Jawaharlal Nehru University students may not be impressed – but the fact is that even the revised hostel fees are between one-fifth and one-twentieth that of charges in Delhi and Mumbai IITs, Chennai’s Loyola College or even higher education institutions in non-metro centres like Jalandhar and Indore. And despite charging much more than JNU, these institutes and colleges still subsidise accommodation.

Here’s the data. Revised hostel charges for JNU students are Rs 3,600 per annum (for students from below-poverty-line families, the revised annual charges are Rs 1,800). In IIT Bombay and Delhi, annual hostel charges are Rs 20,000 and Rs 15,000 per student, respectively.

Non-metro Institutes

Chennai’s Loyola College charges students in humanities and sciences stream Rs 20,000 per year while for engineering students, the annual fees are Rs 65,000. And even non-metro institutes charge much more than JNU, a premier university with extensive facilities located in the Capital.

In IIM Indore, undergraduate students pay Rs 25,000 per annum/per head for triple occupancy, and a post-graduate student pays Rs 75,000 per annum for single occupancy.

Hostel charges are much higher in most undergraduate colleges as well. St Stephen’s students in Delhi pay Rs 60,000 per year while those at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences shell out Rs 30,000.

And institutes generally considered tier-II, whether in big or small cities, also charge students multiple times of what JNU has proposed. Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-D) has a Rs 60,000 per year charge for single occupancy and Rs 45,000 for double occupancy. National Institute of Technology Jalandhar charges Rs 12,000 per year for double occupancy and Rs 18,000 per year for single occupancy. National Institute of Technology, Andhra Pradesh is currently charging Rs 20,000 per annum.

And all of these institutes and colleges, despite charging much more than JNU, still subsidise accommodation substantially. “Loyola gives hostel accommodation to students (arts and science streams) who are first-generation learners (that includes EWS students, orphans, physically challenged persons)...hence we subsidise the cost,” said S Samuel Jeyaseelan, hostel director, Loyola College.

“We are just able to recover the operating cost from the current charges for hostel accommodation. A large amount is being borne by the institute,” said Sarit Kumar Das, director, IIT Ropar.

“A simple principle that the institutes should follow is that they should not make hostel rent a source of income. Also, they should incur no loss or no profit from this source,” said Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).