AICTE: Technical Institutes Must Set Minimum Fee Cap for Engineering & MBA Courses
- AICTE plans to put a cap on the minimum fee charged by technical institutes for engineering and management courses.
- In 2016, it had directed the states to implement the recommendation in all private institutes for the maximum fee that they could charge.
After regulating technical institutes with respect to the maximum fee charged to students, the All India Council for Technical Education or AICTE has come up with an initiative to prescribe a minimum fee for the colleges governed by it.
A high-level committee appointed by the government had recommended implementing a cap on tuition fee charged by technical institutes last year. Following the recommendation made by the committee, AICTE had instructed all the state governments to implement the recommendation at all private technical institutes. So far, no word on minimum fee meant state governments had lowered the fee for different courses, including engineering and MBA.
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AICTE has recently written to Justice Srikrishna Committee, which was constituted to fix a fee cap for technical institutions, asking them to set the minimum fee as well. A senior official associated with HRD Ministry revealed that the committee had accepted the suggestion. Over 7,000 institutes that come under the ambit of AICTE must follow the recommendation, he added.
Contrastingly, a senior official of AICTE revealed that many technical institutes across the country had written to AICTE that it was not possible to lower the fee to Rs. 30,000 per semester. Many institutes have accepted to put a cap on the maximum fee structure. However, these institutes must also agree to set a minimum fee for the courses offered by them, he mentioned.
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The Justice Srikrishna Committee was formed in the year 2014 with an objective to prescribe fee guidelines for technical institutes. The report submitted by the committee suggested a cap on tuition fees and related funds charged by institutes for various courses including MBA and engineering. However, accredited and autonomous will be permitted to charge an additional 20% to 10% tuition fees respectively, as stated by the committee.