It’s been an annual ritual for the past four years. Come the new academic year, the Tamil Nadu government and the state’s 337 self-financing (private unaided) engineering colleges (which churn out 100,000 engineering graduates annually) go head-to-head on the issue of fees chargeable by college managements. Invariably the state government insists that the self-financing engineering colleges adhere to the fee structure prescribed by the government-appointed Justice N.V. Balasubramaniyam Committee in June 2005. It stubbornly refuses to concede the demand of self-financing colleges for higher fees linked to rising costs of technical education. Consequently private college managements in this south-eastern seaboard state (pop. 62 million) are increasingly resorting to levying sky-high fees upon students admitted under the NRI/management quota (15-20 percent).
Therefore in a renewed attempt to curb the collection of capitation and high tuition fees charged to management quota students, the state government constituted a five-member vigilance committee on June 6. Acting on complaints received from students and parents, the vigilance committee has begun intensely investigating colleges in Chennai and plans to spread its net to other parts of the state very soon. On June 15, the committee investigated the private Meenakshi Sundararajan College of Engineering in Chennai and carted away admission-related documents of the current and previous years. Again on June 17, the committee raided the Panimalar Institute of Technology and Panimalar Engineering College in the city.
However, now accustomed to dramatic raids by government appointed committees, self-financing engineering colleges are unfazed. For several years they have been demanding a more viable fees structure, arguing that the tuition fees fixed by the government are too low to provide high-quality education, and pay rising faculty salaries. But their demands have been ignored because of government obsession with subsidising tertiary education to enable “weaker sections” to access higher education.
Surprisingly, despite two landmark Supreme Court judgements acknowledging the absurdity of government control of private unaided institutions, the state government continues to regulate admission procedures and tuition fees payable by students. In the TMA Pai Foundation & Ors vs. Union of India (2002) a 11-judge bench of the Supreme Court granted privately run unaided (or self-financing) professional colleges the right to conduct their own entrance examinations and levy “reasonable” tuition fees without government interference. But unfortunately, in a “clarificatory judgement” in Islamic Academy vs. State of Maharashtra & Ors (2003), a five-judge bench of the apex court permitted state governments to establish committees headed by retired high court judges to supervise admissions and determine reasonability of tuition fees. Taking advantage of this latter ruling, the state government set up the Justice A. Raman Committee in 2004 to determine fee structures of private unaided engineering colleges. This committee was later replaced by the Balasubramaniyam Committee in June 2005.
With the committee stipulating absurdly low tuition fees for ‘merit quota’ students, private engineering colleges in the state have resorted to charging huge capitation and tuition fees for allocation of management quota seats. Informed academics are also quick to highlight that in Tamil Nadu, the majority of private engineering colleges are promoted and run by politicians who regard higher education as a high-returns business.
“Successive state governments have not taken any effective action so far against errant private colleges and have freely allowed individuals to run more than one institution. There is no will either on the part of college managements or regulatory authorities to rationalise fee structures or to ensure transparency in admission procedures. Feeble attempts by government appointed committees have failed miserably,” says D. Victor, director, Academy for Quality and Excellence in Higher Education, Chennai.
Clearly excessive government interference in engineering education, and the inability of the state government to enforce the law against private engineering colleges promoted by powerful politicians, are responsible for recurring scandals in higher education. Unless the state government rethinks tuition fee controls and liberalises admissions into the state’s 350 engineering colleges, they will be bedeviled by accountable fund shortages resulting in poor quality of faculty and inadequate infrastructure. That’s the root cause of Tamil Nadu’s paradox of producing thousands of engineering graduates unable to meet the needs of Indian industry.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)