Pune: In news that comes as a respite to international students seeking admission to Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), the varsity has relaxed the academic fees by two times the existing amount for international students.
The management council of SPPU, on Wednesday, decided to reduce the fees for Persons of Indian Origin (PIO)/ Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) from five times the regular fees to three times the regular fees and for Non-Resident Indian (NRI) and The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) two times from three times. This will be followed from the academic year 2018-19.
The decision has come out in order to attract more students. Since Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) undertook the responsibility of admissions in professional courses while the non-professional courses are taken care of by the university, the admissions have decreased in the varsity, informed Vijay Khare, Director of International Centre. Last year, approximately 800-900 international students had taken admission under SPPU.
“One of the main reasons is to increase the number of students taking admission in the university. SPPU now handles admissions for only non-professional courses and not many students prefer non-professional courses. The attraction is more towards professional courses,” said Khare.
“Besides, Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and many African students had demanded reduction in the fees, as they were unable to manage with the existing fee structure,” added Khare.
According to Azizullah Sangin, an international student studying at a city-based college affiliated to SPPU, regular fees in the colleges sums up to around Rs 13,000 to Rs 14,000 whereas for international students, it amounts to Rs 30,000 to Rs 35,000. He also added that international students require to pay an amount to the university in order to get an eligibility certificate, then further pay separately for admission forms and additional fees, which amounts to a lot.
