The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Degree colleges strike it rich with saleable courses

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 03, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Degree colleges strike it rich with saleable courses

Rasheed Kappan

A seat in BBM can cost a student Rs. 1.2 lakh a year

BANGALORE: Faced with acute shortage of students for basic sciences, unaided degree colleges affiliated to Bangalore University have resorted to an old strategy: make money through courses in demand. The absence of fee regulatory body like the one for professional courses has made some private unaided colleges in Bangalore charge an exorbitant fee of Rs. 1.2 lakh a year for BBM course.

The private college managements justify huge fee, calling the course a "package" incorporating even Common Admission Test (CAT) training. But the students are offered no choice.

They cannot select only BBM, which has a fee structure of Rs. 55,000. The same college offers a B.Com degree with Capital Markets, Company Secretaryship and Insurance as optionals for an annual fee of Rs. 37,600 plus Rs. 15,000.

Non-Karnataka students have to pay an additional Rs. 12,000 every year. But there is no uniformity of fees in various colleges.

Neither is there an official mechanism to verify the colleges' infrastructure, faculty strength and other academic matters, factors cited by managements to justify their high fees.

For professional colleges, the State Government had at least experimented with two fee fixation committees before constituting a One-man Regulatory Committee to oversee the admissions proc ess. No such panels were even thought of for general degree courses. So, you have one college charging a development fee of Rs. 50,000 and another Rs. 1.5 lakh over the next three years as tuition fee for B.Sc. Biotechnology (although the subject is only one of the three optional ones).

Another city college offers the same course for a development fee of Rs. 60,000. But this college has a lower fee of Rs. 35,000 for the first year and Rs. 25,000 for the second and third years. Besides, every student is given a free laptop.

Colleges with both aided and unaided courses have separate fee structures.

The St. Joseph's Arts and Science College, for instance, has a nominal fee of Rs. 10,600 for Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics (PCM); Chemistry, Environmental Science, Botany (CEB); and Chemistry, Environmental Science and Zoology (CEZ).

But the unaided Chemistry, Botany, Biotechnology (CBBt) combination has a fee of Rs. 45,000. Non-Karnataka students should pay an additional Rs. 6,000, Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) Rs. 30,000 and foreign nationals Rs. 50,000.

Aided courses have low fees because the teachers' salaries are taken care of by the Department of Collegiate Education.

Colleges have to fend for themselves to sustain unaided courses.

Aid constraints

But there are problems with the "aid" itself. Explains Fr. Ambrose Pinto, principal of St. Joseph's College: "Aid means funds only for paying the teaching staff. There is no money for maintenance. Running a chemistry laboratory, for instance, is expensive. Pure sciences, which have no takers, are aided but applied courses such as Biotechnology are unaided.The Collegiate Education Department's understanding of education is highly bureaucratic, not academic."

The university collects Rs. 427 for every student from both aided and unaided colleges for courses other than Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA). This includes a registration fee of Rs. 150, Rs. 75 admission fee, Rs.30 sports development fee, Rs. 20 NSS fee and processing fee of Rs. 200.

Non-Karnataka students are charged an eligibility fee of Rs. 1,000. This fee is Rs. 2,000 for NRIs and Rs. 2,500 for foreigners.

BCA students should pay a higher registration fee of Rs. 1,500 and admission fee of Rs. 1,000. Foreign students will have to pay Rs. 3,000 for this course.

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