Hyderabad: Private centres are charging engineering students more for short-term course competitive examinations than colleges do for the regular engineering courses. The short-term courses last three to six months.
The government reimburses each student up to Rs 38,000 tuition fee every year, but they pay coaching centres up to Rs 60,000 from their pocket for short-term courses.
Mr Surender Thallapelly, an engineering aspirant who recently went to join a short-term course, said he was shocked when they told him they increase the fee every year. “For short-term courses of three to four months for GATE or IES examinations. The coaching institutes are charging Rs 55,000 to Rs 67,000.”
The government had promised to regulate the fee at coaching institutes a year back, but nothing has been done, he said. “Government should issue guidelines to regulate the fee hike in these institutes,” he added.
Mr Goutham Rao, president, Engineering College Association, said, “An agency should be created to monitor and regulate the fee at coaching institutes. They should be registered with the government as well as with the All India Council for Technical Education and they should upload details of the course provided by them on their websites.”
“As there is no monitoring, they exploit the situation and earn huge profits in a short span of time”.
Mr G.V.K. Reddy head of the civil engineering department at Vardhaman Engineering College, said, students don’t take the engineering course in the first two years.
“When they come to the third year, they understand that they need to pull up their socks and then they run to these coaching institutes to clear backlogs and for competitive exams.”
He said if students focused on their studies from Day 1 at the engineering colleges, no student would need to go to coaching centres.
