HYDERABAD: The state government is now mulling a plan to get around Wednesday's Supreme Court directive on fee structure in professional colleges in its favour. A day after the apex court dismissed its petition against a uniform fee structure for both merit and management quota seats, the state government on Thursday found two options to reduce its fee reimbursement burden.
One, it would fix an upper fee limit per student for reimbursements under the scheme. And, second, colleges will be asked to increase their management quota seats. Government officials maintained that since the SC directive deals only with the fee issue and not seat division in colleges, the two options are legally valid.The colleges, however, are crying foul. And, for students, the wait for admission has just got longer with no clarity yet on when the counseling is to commence. Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Thursday announced that a cabinet subcommittee will be formed to study the situation and come up with a solution.
This is expected to further delay the admission process, which was supposed to start before August 10. The college managements, however, claimed that the cabinet does not have a role in deciding the fee structure as per the admission rules since it was the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee which is the body responsible for the same.
State officials said that they might fix an upper limit for fees reimbursed under the scheme at Rs 31,200 per annum per student (and not the revised Rs 50,200 once the uniform fee structure is implemented), which was the fee in the last academic year.
Further tightening its approach, state government is considering restricting the number of students taking admission under the fee reimbursement scheme by introducing eligibility parameters such as attendance and academics apart from parental income.
"That would ensure that the state's expenditure on the scheme would remain at Rs 4,500 crore per annum," said an official. In addition, officials are also looking at earmarking 50% of the total seats as belonging to management quota. Until last year, only 30% of the total number of seats could be reserved under management quota.
These adjustments will see the number of seats under convener quota coming down with the resultant increase in the competition for these seats. At present, a total of 2.82 lakh seats are available in the state for students looking to obtain an engineering degree. A total of 2.06 lakh students had cleared the engineering stream Eamcet this year.
Checking the managements further, the government insisted that admissions will be conducted only for colleges which have submitted the details of their expenses. Only 240 engineering colleges in the state have submitted details of their yearly expenditure to SC in order to apply for a fee hike. The colleges which have not submitted the details will be given just one more chance to do so, sources said.
Officials concerned held two meetings on Thursday with the chief minister and deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha who is also the minister for higher education. "A final decision on the matter will be taken by the cabinet subcommittee," a source said.
Source : TOI
One, it would fix an upper fee limit per student for reimbursements under the scheme. And, second, colleges will be asked to increase their management quota seats. Government officials maintained that since the SC directive deals only with the fee issue and not seat division in colleges, the two options are legally valid.The colleges, however, are crying foul. And, for students, the wait for admission has just got longer with no clarity yet on when the counseling is to commence. Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Thursday announced that a cabinet subcommittee will be formed to study the situation and come up with a solution.
This is expected to further delay the admission process, which was supposed to start before August 10. The college managements, however, claimed that the cabinet does not have a role in deciding the fee structure as per the admission rules since it was the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee which is the body responsible for the same.
State officials said that they might fix an upper limit for fees reimbursed under the scheme at Rs 31,200 per annum per student (and not the revised Rs 50,200 once the uniform fee structure is implemented), which was the fee in the last academic year.
Further tightening its approach, state government is considering restricting the number of students taking admission under the fee reimbursement scheme by introducing eligibility parameters such as attendance and academics apart from parental income.
"That would ensure that the state's expenditure on the scheme would remain at Rs 4,500 crore per annum," said an official. In addition, officials are also looking at earmarking 50% of the total seats as belonging to management quota. Until last year, only 30% of the total number of seats could be reserved under management quota.
These adjustments will see the number of seats under convener quota coming down with the resultant increase in the competition for these seats. At present, a total of 2.82 lakh seats are available in the state for students looking to obtain an engineering degree. A total of 2.06 lakh students had cleared the engineering stream Eamcet this year.
Checking the managements further, the government insisted that admissions will be conducted only for colleges which have submitted the details of their expenses. Only 240 engineering colleges in the state have submitted details of their yearly expenditure to SC in order to apply for a fee hike. The colleges which have not submitted the details will be given just one more chance to do so, sources said.
Officials concerned held two meetings on Thursday with the chief minister and deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha who is also the minister for higher education. "A final decision on the matter will be taken by the cabinet subcommittee," a source said.
Source : TOI
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