The Hindu : Karnataka News : Admissions: differential fee structure favoured

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 07, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

Admissions: differential fee structure favoured

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, JAN. 6. Will a comprehensive Central legislation resolve the vexed professional college admissions tangle?

While the Education Ministers' conference on January 10 and 11 will discuss the issue, speakers at a round-table meet here wanted the legislation to incorporate a differential fee structure that does not pass the entire burden of the cost of education to the student.

The former judge of the Karnataka High Court, M.F. Saldanha, cautioned that hurriedly drafted legislation ran the risk of getting the priorities wrong and inviting legal challenges.

He was a participant at the round-table conference organised by the Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad here on Wednesday.

Ashok Harnahalli, advocate, suggested that the legislation could provide for an admission committee with representatives of the State Government, private managements and other experts as members.

Seat sharing

Seventy-five per cent of the professional college seats, he said, can be distributed by this panel to the various categories (reservation and merit) while 10 per cent seats could go for students from outside the State. "The remaining 15 per cent can be left to the managements," he suggested.

Of the 75 per cent seats filled by the admission panel, some could be free seats, subsidised by the State based on the students' economic status.

Minority colleges could admit 50 per cent students from their community on merit. Unfilled seats will have to go to the general quota, he said.

The Director of JSS Institute, Dhananjaya, said the differential fee structure is common abroad.

"In the United States, there are separate fees for local students, those from outside a state, and another fee structure for foreign students."

He said that the entire cost of education should not be passed on to the student. Institutions could instead look at internal resource generation.

Bureaucratic control

Chandrashekhara Shetty, former Vice-Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi Health University and member of the A.B. Murgod fee fixation committee, wanted bureaucratic control over higher education to be kept to the minimum.

The Government and the regulatory bodies can act more as facilitators, he said.

M.R. Narayan from the Institute of Social and Economic Change wanted the fee fixation process to be more transparent and the Government to retain control of higher education sector even if it were to refrain from funding. But he was not for a Central legislation if it meant a uniform structure for the entire country.

D.A. Pandu from the R.V. Group of Institutions said that 16,000 engineering seats had remained unfilled last year with the CET Cell itself transferring 10,500 seats to the managements. If this trend continues, many colleges will close down, he said.

A. Jayaram, Chief of Bureau of The Hindu, felt that even a Central legislation could not address State-specific problems. He wondered whether the Centre had any compulsion to come out with a legislation since the admission problem was restricted to the southern States.

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