Agree on Rs35,000 fee, Karnataka govt tells engineering colleges

The bargain between the state government and private professional college managements over fees to be charged continues.

In the latest development, the state higher education department told private engineering college managements that it is not going to raise the fee for undergraduate engineering courses to Rs60,000 as they have demanded. Instead, the department has decided to raise the fee from previous year’s Rs30,000 by only Rs5,000.

This issue was discussed at a meeting of department officials headed by higher education minister VS Acharya on Friday. “We cannot have such a steep hike. We should also consider students’ interests. We are ready to hike the fee by Rs5,000, not more,” said Acharya.

Meanwhile, sources said the government is not interested in implementing the Padmaraj  Commission report. “If the talks fail with managements, then we can think of the commission report as an alternative,” said an official.

However, Acharya confirmed that he is going to have a meeting with managements in a week to finalise things.