Date:15/11/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/15/stories/2007111560510400.htm

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Colleges find novel way of selling seats

Students lured with lower fee, made to pay up in 2nd year
Students penalised for the fault of a college in Guntur

HYDERABAD: Engineering colleges have found a novel method to “sell” their seats under the management quota - attract students with lower fee initially and force them to pay the remaining amount the following year along with that year’s fee. Those not yielding to their demands are not allowed to write their examinations. In some cases students are also insulted in full public view.

In such situations, students have no other go but to pay as they cannot shift the college midway. Colleges are exploiting the weakness of parents in such cases.

Only a few cases have come to the notice of officials while lots of other students silently pay up the fee and settle the dispute as they don’t want their academics to be affected. Officials plead helplessness since the admission and fee under the management quota is something between the students and the colleges. “We can only intervene if the admission is done against rules or the colleges collect excessive fee. But we have no role in these kind of issues,” an official explained.

Colleges with “not so good” image and fail to draw students to their courses seem to resort to such practices. Though colleges are allowed to collect a fee of Rs. 80,000 per year under the management quota, they hardly find students. Students with higher ranks and are unsure of getting their choice of branch in the counselling are lured through advertisements or agents promising seats at a cheaper fee. The first year is smooth but the problems start from the second year as students are forced to pay up. Those who want to leave are not given the certificates. In some cases, colleges make it clear that fee reduction is only for first year.

In some instances, colleges have penalised students for their own faults.

In one such case, an engineering college in Guntur district was barred from making admissions in the management quota in a particular year as it had admitted excess students illegally the previous year.

Instead of regretting the decision, the college forced the students admitted illegally to pay not only their fee but also that of the seats denied to them.

A few students thus ended up paying double fee for a single seat. Students are now demanding that a mechanism should be put in place at the APSCHE to address them.