Anna University to hike tuition fees

CHENNAI: From the coming academic year, the students who are joining Anna University’s four campuses may have to pay Rs 20,000 as tuition fee instead of the existing Rs 8,500.
Nearly after two decades, the university has decided to increase the tuition fees to address the deficit in its revenue and expenditure.
“Despite the proposed increase, the tuition fees are still on the lower side when compared with other technical institutions and central government institutions,” said registrar J Kumar.
He also pointed out that central government institutions, which are receiving full grant from the Centre, was increasing their tuition fee once in five years to meet the inflation costs.
Officials said they were trying to bridge the gap in expenditure towards water, electricity, security and lab facilities.
The Tamil Nadu government had given salary grant (block grant) to the university till 2012-13. Citing the university’s financial position and funds received from various agencies, the state government stopped the grant.
But, now, the higher education department is taking a different view and has decided to support the premier technical university. The university also initiated steps to seek the block grant from the state government again.
We also need to bear the cost of establishing new courses on Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and Madurai regional campuses.
“In last 20 years, we have not hiked the fee. For any institution, the fee hike is inevitable. Fees in IITs, which was Rs 25,000 a few years ago, have been increased to more than Rs 1 lakh,” vice-chancellor said M K Surappa.
The university has implemented recommendations of the two pay commissions during that period.
“We have to meet the salaries of the faculty, improve the infrastructure and equipment. This is unusual that the fees were not hiked in the past 20 years,” he said adding that the fee hike was done rationally by comparing other institutions and universities.
The decision was approved by the university’s syndicate meeting conducted earlier.