Fee Hike: Parents Of NIT Calicut Students Write To HRD Minister

New Delhi:  Parents of first year BTech students of National Institute of Technology (NIT), Calicut wrote to Human Resouces Development Minister Prakash Javadekar regarding the fee hike in NITs. The parents wrote to the ministry on the recent formula adopted by the NIT council, headed by then Union HRD minister Ms. Smriti Irani 'approving the proposal of adopting a funding mechanism for creation of capital assets, research grants and to cover recurring expenditure through enhancement of fees of students hiking the tuition fee from existing Rs 70,000 to Rs 1,25,000 per student per annum from ensuing academic year'.

The fee 'revision' decision was informed to the directors of all 31 NITs on last June in a letter sent by HRD ministry.

"This move will surely have a direct impact on many bright students who already find it difficult to afford the existing fee, as evident from the interactions with the parent community of NITs", read the letter by the parents.

This group, the letter further mentioned, is composed of the bulk of parents who strive hard to raise debts beyond their means to provide quality education to their children.

"Increasing the fees will not only impede the attempt by the underprivileged of our country to become upwardly mobile, but also will hurt academic interests", said the letter.

The parents said that, before 2009 fee was only Rs 15000 per year and during 2010 it was increased to Rs 40,000, then in 2013 it was further increased to Rs 70,000 per year.

The NIT fees saw an eight fold raise in last few years.

"With steep fee hikes in the last few years, NITs and IITs are becoming more and more beyond the reach of common people in our country", commented Dr. Sudeep K S, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, NIT Calicut.

While alleging the hikes as 'seems to be a scam to help a huge educational loan business', Dr. Sudeep added that, the tuition fees itself is Rs 1,25,000 a year, and the mess bills etc are on top of this. There is a remission of two third of the fees for those with annual income less than Rs 5 lakhs, but even then I think it is heavily demanding on parents. All this seems to be a scam to help a huge educational loan business.

In this context of fee hike, parents of NIT BTech students, requested the HRD Minister to reduce the fee to Rs 40,000 per year or to increase the limit of income to 15 lakhs per annum instead of 5 lakhs.

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