The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Probe into complaints over fees at college

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 16, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Probe into complaints over fees at college

Staff Reporter

Panel plans surprise visits throughout State

CHENNAI: A surprise investigation was conducted at a self-financing engineering college here on Monday by the committee established by Tamil Nadu to look into colleges demanding fees higher than what was stipulated by the government. The committee had received information over phone from some students that the college had demanded capitation and excess fees, said A. Ramasamy, Vice-Chairman, Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education, who is part of the committee.

Around 4.30 p.m., Mr. Ramasamy, accompanied by S. Bhaskaran, member secretary, TANSCHE, who is also a member of the committee; S. Ganesan, director of student affairs, Anna University; A.M. Rafiq, special officer, Directorate of Technical Education and G. Paneerselvam, senior liaison, Directorate of Technical Education, visited Meenakshi Sundararajan College of Engineering in Kodambakkam.

After discussing behind closed doors with the authorities of the college for more than two hours, Mr. Ramasamy spoke to journalists who accompanied the team. The committee had gone through documents and had taken some of them for further investigation on the basis of “suspicion,” he said. The documents wererelated to the previous year’s admissions, he said.

Self-financing colleges could not demand fees higher than what was stipulated by the government, said Mr. Ramasamy.

He added that the committee would look into complaints regarding demands of higher fees.

The committee plans to conduct such surprise investigations throughout the State. Students and parents could inform the committee about any demands for higher fees or capitation fees from engineering colleges by telephoning 28440961, he said.

K.S. Babai, Principal of Meenakshi Sundararajan College of Engineering, said the college had not demanded fees higher than the government norms; neither were higher fees nor capitation fees demanded, she said.

The admissions for the first-year course had not yet begun, she added.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu