Tamil Nadu: Self-financing colleges seek 50 per cent engineering fee hike
CHENNAI: The representatives of self-financing colleges met Justice N.V. Balasubramanian committee on Thursday with a demand of a considerable fee hike for engineering courses from next academic year.
It is learnt that the colleges are demanding around 50 per cent hike for the both management and government quota seats.
Currently, the fee for government quota seats in private engineering colleges is Rs 40,000 and management quota seats is Rs 70, 000.
“We have demanded the fee hike to compensate our teachers’ salary on par with the AICTE’s scale of pay” said RS Munirathinam, president, Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu.
“AICTE’s handbook has prescribed the maximum fee to be collected for engineering courses. But, in Tamil Nadu, there are many poor students studying in engineering courses. So, we have not demanded maximum hike,” he said.
The consortium also requested the fee committee to gather details about the engineering course fee in all the four southern districts.
“We just had discussions with the private colleges. The different associations gave different representations. We will go through all their representations and consider various factors before taking a decision,” sources from the committee said.
The committee is likely to announce its decision on next week. Tamil Nadu Engineering colleges are going through a tough phase. Last year, around one lakh engineering seats, fell vacant after the general counselling.
This year, the IT job cuts are expected to have an impact on engineering admissions this year.
Over 1.3 lakh students register online for BE counselling
If one has to go to the online registration for engineering counselling, IT job cuts and fewer job placements in engineering colleges this year has not dented the interest in engineering courses as more than 1.3 lakh students have registered for the counselling online so far.
But last year, more than 2 lakh students had registered online and 1.84 lakh have paid the fees for the counselling. In the end, only 1.33 lakh applications were received by the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions Committee.
“This year we can expect the applications to go further down. If TNEA receives more than one lakh applications for engineering counselling it would be a big achievement,” a senior professor from Anna University said.
“The parents and students are keeping the engineering courses as their third option due to the job cuts in IT companies and the reduction in campus recruitments. But, still, to be on the safe side, we have applied to the engineering counselling,” a parent said.
As many as 11 engineering colleges in the state have opted for no admission this year. More than 100 colleges in the state have filled less than 20% seats last year.
As per the engineering admissions, schedule, the engineering counselling will commence from June 27. The rank list will be released on June 22.
