Rs 300 crore collected in capitation fee in Kerala

Thiruvananthapuram: A rough estimate showed that education institutions in the state collected over Rs 300 crore in capitation fees this year. This money is not receipted or accounted for and is black money. The money is either invested in real estate or abroad. If it was invested in real estate, it ended up artificially hiking real estate prices and resulted in inflation and price distortion, sources said.

With nearly 28,000 seats remaining vacant in the state last year, the scope of capitation fees for engineering colleges was very limited. The colleges collected a capitation fee in the range of Rs 1.5 to Rs 3 lakh. However, the capitation fee for medical courses ranged from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 75 lakh. The same is also the case with BDS with capitation fees somewhere between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 50 lakh.

Sources said that some institutions also offered Rs 1.5-crore capitation fee packages clubbing MBBS and PG courses together in a single go. Students are even asked to book their seats at the time of plus two.

Though authorities claim that capitation fee is illegal and the admission supervision committee for professional colleges is given powers to book offenders, the problem is that students do not complain. Even the Vigilance Bureau is empowered to register a case as capitation fee can be considered as corruption, but not a single complaint has reached them, the sources said.

Of the total 2,950 MBBS seats, only 1,895 are in the government quota and the rest are in the management quota and NRI quota whereas in the case of BDS, of the 830 seats, 525 are in the government quota. For BTech, of the 56,407seats, 32,822 are in the merit quota and for BArch, 609 of the 1,040 seats are in the merit quota.

Apart from that, a lot of the capitation fees are in the form of donations. They are also generated during admissions to plus two courses. The donations for plus two courses ranged from Rs 30,000 for art subjects to even Rs 3 lakh for science subjects.

There are a total of 2,45,795 plus two seats in the merit quota, 38,875 management seats, 20,830 community quota seats and 55,630 seats in unaided schools. Donations are collected for all seats other than the merit quota.