Telangana to ignore panel hiking fee for BTech
Move will make engineering unaffordable for the poor.
Hyderabad: The state government is not in favour of implementing the recommendations made by the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee, which include an increase in fees for engineering, pharmacy and management courses.
The government believes that, if implemented, this move will make the study of engineering unaffordable to socially- and economically-backward classes. It will also impose a huge burden on the state government by increasing expenditure under the fee reimbursement scheme.
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has directed all state governments to implement the recommendations included in the Srikrishna Comm-ittee report from the 2018-19 academic year onwards in order to improve the standards of engineering colleges and enable the payment of faculty salaries as per the AICTE pay scales.
The Committee has recommended that the maximum fees for B.Tech courses should be set at '1,58,300 per year in metros, and '1,50,500 in cities. At present, the maximum fees in Telangana are set at Rs 1,13,500.
Colleges also want the committee’s report to be implemented if the government is keen on their complying with the AICTE norms pertaining to faculty and infrastructure. A confrontation with the AICTE may lead to a halting of renewal of approvals, which could have an impact on next year’s admissions.
Dr Rev. K.V.K. Rao, the national chairman of the Federation of Social Responsibility Professional Institutions, said, “None of the colleges in the state complies with the AICTE norms. This is because the fee fixed by state government is very low. The government wants quality standards in colleges to be high, but there is no corresponding fee structure for this.”
Though the AICTE asked all states to implement new fee structure from January 2017, the Telangana government sought some additional time on the grounds that such changes could not be made in the middle of an academic year. The Government promised to consider the recommendations before the next academic year.