Varsity discusses issue of fee hike

Pune: The fee hike issue was discussed intensively during the senate meeting at the Savitribai Phule Pune University on Saturday.

The debate came to the fore when Principal and senate member Prakash Patil spoke about the need to increase the fees at traditional and professional colleges. In his agenda, Patil proposed that the university should consider increasing fees in traditional courses like arts, science and commerce by 30 per cent and 20 per cent in professional courses.

Senate member Shamkant Deshmukh of Modern College of Arts, Commerce and Science, Shivajinagar, said, “The university should pay serious attention to this issue. Already, the State government has imposed around 78 per cent reservation in education for which students receive a scholarship, therefore, only 22 per cent are left in general category who are actually paying the fees. The scholarship amount is disbursed by the social welfare department and already many colleges have been facing the problem of timely disbursement of scholarship amount by the department. All these concerns should be kept in mind while reviewing the fee hike issue.”

Even, management council member Sudhakar Jadhavrao backed him on the point. However, there were a few senate members including Santosh Dhore and Sanjay Chakane among others, who opposed the increase of educational fees. They stated that it will affect a large number of students, who hail from rural areas.

Vice-Chancellor Nitin Karmakar stated that it is a very sensitive issue. “We have formed a fee regulatory committee, which is reviewing the fee structure of all courses. Around three meetings have already been held in this regard. I will forward this proposal to the committee. At present, I will not give any decision over this,” said Karmalkar, assuring senate members that no random hike in fees will be approved.