Students protest against high fees in professional edu

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: Hundreds of students from all across the state on Thursday protested against the hike in fees in professional education outside the Bandra office of the Shikshan Shulka Samiti, Maharastra’s fee determining body.

“Fees in professional streams of education have been rising each year, forcing parents to take loans. In most states of India, fees are not revised annually, but after three years. That is unfortunately not the case in Maharashtra,’’ said Vivek Korde, president of Forum Against Commercialization of Education (FACE). Several parents and students, whohad travelled from Nashik, complained about the manner in which annual tuition fees at the Sandip Institute of Technology and Research Center had spiralled by 100% from Rs 36,000 to Rs 72,000.

“The parents’ association of this Nashik-based college had earlier written to the Samiti, but to no avail. In fact, the parents had pointed out that the college claimed it spent Rs 30 lakh in a year on advertising and has mentioned that as an expense the students must bear,’’ secretary of FACE Milind Wagh pointed out.

Parents alleged that some of them were unable to put together the required finances all of a sudden when the fees were declared, but the college threatened students and said they would not be able to attend classes unless they paid the fees. FACE has demanded that the difference between the ad hoc fees and final fees be “reasonable and not more than 10%, apart from the fact that the fee proposal of all colleges be put up on their respective websites’’.