Tuition fees may shoot up in top engineering colleges

BENGALURU: Determined to enforce a nine-year-old law that would do away with subsidised seats for meritorious students in private engineering colleges, the state government is set to hard-sell a new subsidy model to private colleges in a crucial meeting scheduled for Thursday .

The Karnataka Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Determination of Fee) Act, 2006 will streamline the process of admissions into medical and engineering courses, but without the low-fee government-quota seats in private colleges. Following protests, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah rolled back its implementation last year.

Under this Act, fees in the most sought-after engi neering colleges are likely to shoot up as a Fee Regulatory Committee (FRC) headed by retired High Court Judge R Gururajan will fix tuition for each college based on the cost-per-student, factoring in infrastructure, expenditure and location. So far, the fees have been fixed based on yearly agreements between the government and the colleges. As a result, the government wants the top private engineering colleges to subsidise fees by defining merit based on ranks secured in their entrance test.Government colleges will conduct a separate test. "This is an option we are examining, to subsidise fees for economically-backward meritorious students. The final call has to come from the chief minister, who is also the finance minister," higher education minister RV Deshpande told ET.

A senior official explained: "It is only in the top 20 colleges that we face this problem. The fee in other colleges won't be high because they lack the kind of infrastructure the top ones have. Private colleges can provide fee concessions for merit students ranked 1 to 10,000 or even 20,000. This will solve the problem."


Unaided engineering colleges in Karnataka give 45% (minority colleges give 40%) of their seats to be filled up through the government's Common Entrance Test (CET), compared with about 65% in Maharashtra and some other states. The fee for one seat based on CET ranking is Rs 36,09041,590, which has remained unchanged for the last six years, forcing colleges to bear rising costs. The Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges' Association (KUPECA), which represents 193 colleges, made it clear that it will settle only for a hike in fees. "Let the government pay us the cost-per-student that we incur.We want them to notify the college-wise fee to take the discussion forward," KUPECA secretary M K Panduranga Setty said. He runs the R V College of Engineering, which has proposed to the FRC an annual fee of Rs 2.8 lakh for one engineering seat.

"We suggested to the government to float a fund with contributions from all of us. This fund can be used to give out scholarships by properly defining merit," Setty said. The Thursday meeting with private colleges would also discuss the possible amendments the 2006 Act needs, Deshpande said. "Once we know what's in their mind, we can act accordingly ."