Senate approves fee hike

Aarti Kapur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 26

As many as 15,000 students enrolled with Panjab University and its 192-affiliated colleges will have to shell out more for their respective courses from the next session 2015-16. The university Senate today gave its final nod to increase the PU fee by five per cent and college courses fee by 2.5 per cent.

As per the fresh fee structure approved, there is a minimum increase of Rs 500 and a maximum increase of Rs 1,200 for all courses of the university teaching departments and its regional centres. Along with it, Rs 30 will be charged for the wi-fi facility provided to the students.

As per the new fee structure, college students enrolled in BCom courses will have to pay Rs 19,500 per annum, BA will have to pay Rs 19,762 per annum and for BSc, students will have to shell out Rs 12,129 per annum.

An official said with the fee hike the university will get an additional revenue of around Rs.1.6 crore. Out of the enhanced amount generated Rs 75 to Rs 80 lakh will be spent on giving scholarships and free education to poor students.

A majority of Senators opposed the fee hike by giving suggestions of revenue generation by cutting unnecessary expenditures which include a cut in TA/DA and an increase in NRI fee structure rather than burdening the university students. But the Dean Student Welfare Navdeep Goyal informed the House that the student council president has also approved the proposed fee hike after which the issue was tabled in the Senate.

Vice-Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover who chaired the meeting informed the Senators that to get grants issued on time from the Union Government, it was necessary for the university to make a notional increase in the fee as the government authorities always questioned as to what measures the authorities had taken to increase their revenue besides depending on the Centre tomeet their deficit.

In fact the Senators also authorised the VC to approve the college fee hike as it has to be mentioned in the new college prospectus.