Many colleges under the Delhi University have revised the annual fee structure for undergraduate courses, and increased it by at least Rs 2,000 this year, a bulletin on the varsity’s official website said on Tuesday.
Authorities on most of the colleges said that “insufficient funds” was the reason for the increase, but some said it was a “routine revision”, the Hindustan Times reported. While fee structure for most of the courses in Gargi College had been revised between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000, admission fee to BA [Honours] Business Economics has been increased by Rs 14,000 to Rs 41,200 as compared to last year’s fee of Rs 26,875.
“The University has approved BA [Honours] in Business Economics as a self-finance course,” said Promila Kumar, prinicipal of Gargi College. “We have to generate our own funds to pay salary to teachers besides other expenses. We are not getting any grant from the university for the course.”
The average increase in the fee structure in Aryabhatta College, Bhaskaracharya College for Applied Sciences and Ramjas College, among other institutions, is reportedly between Rs 1,500 and Rs 3,500.
At Aryabhatta College, admission fee for Bachelor of Science [Honours] in Mathematics has been revised to Rs 15,230 from last year’s Rs 10,650. Principal Manoj Sinha said the funds were required to maintain the laboratories. Miranda House Bursar Janaki Subramanyan claimed that they had not increased the fee for the new session.
According to the new bulletin, admission fee for several courses in Ramanujan College and Institute of Home Economics have been increased by Rs 8,000. The fee for courses such as Bachelor of Science [Honours] in Home Science and Microbiology were Rs 19,675, but it has now been revised to Rs 28,890.
Member of the Delhi University’s executive council Rakesh Jha said they will be demanding for a rollback of the increase in fee as it was against making higher education more accessible. “The drastic cut in UGC grants has brought such a situation,” he told Hindustan Times. “Just imagine what will happen when we will be forced to take loan from HEFA [Higher Education Financing Agency]. The result will be students’ fees in lakhs to repay the loans.”
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