The negligence of the Admissions and Fee Regulatory Committee in devising a rational fee structure for engineering colleges over the years has now proved costly for the state government. Though only a handful of colleges submitted fee proposals both in 2007 and 2010, the AFRC had fixed a common fee of Rs 30,200 and Rs 31,000 respectively, in the convenor quota. This gave undue benefit to a majority of the colleges that had failed to comply with the rules regarding faculty and infrastructure. The government did nothing about this as students and parents paid the price for the faulty fee fixing policy.
But, with the implementation of the fee reimbursement scheme from 2008, the government began to feel the pinch, since it had to pay the fees for nearly 80 per cent of the students in engineering colleges, amounting to thousands of crores of rupees. Since 2008, it has spent nearly Rs 10,000 crore of public money on fee reimbursement to these colleges, most of which were below par. Nearly 400 colleges that came up after the fee reimbursement scheme was implemented also enjoyed the same benefits and fees as the better colleges.
The scheme encouraged many from BC, EBC, SC, ST and minority categories to take admission in engineering colleges, which resulted in a huge demand for seats. The managements exploited this and sta-rted hundreds of colleges in the same buildings by changing the name boards. They could, thus, rake in the fee reimbursement funds from the government. Some colleges even started bribing students to join by promising to refund an amount up to Rs 10,000 after the government reimburses the student’s entire fee. They assured students there was no need to attend classes regularly as attendance would be ‘managed’.
This led to the pass percentage declining to 20. Less than 10 per cent of engineering graduates produced by these colleges were said to be employable. Having realised its mistake, the government is now talking about revamping the entire AFRC.