Anna University or AU belonging to Chennai is now grabbing many eyeballs. The reason for that is AU has increased the tuition fees. It is now revealed that from the coming academic year the students joining the 4 campuses of AU might have to pay an amount of Rs 20,000 as tuition fees. It is known that presently the tuition fee is Rs 8500.
The important point is AU has decided to increase the tuition fees after two decades or 20 years and it was mainly done to address the needs for funds to meet the rising expenditure in terms of salaries to the employees, cost of infrastructure for courses and purchase of equipments for labs.
Previously in the year 1999, Anna University increased the tuition fees and it made huge noises is known. It is important to mention that since 1999 AU had implemented 2 pay commission awards. According to vice-chancellor of AU, Mr. Surappa, increase in the fees is inevitable for any institution. He spoke about how the fees in IIT’s were Rs 25,000 few years back and how the fees have increased to Rs 1lakh now.
An official then explained that inspite of increase in the tuition fees by AU the tuition fees were still lower than the tuition fees of other technical and central government institutions. He then highlighted that central institutions received full grant from the Union government but they have been increasing the tuition fees every 5 years of time mentioning inflation as the reason.
The important point is the university officials spoke about how they were trying to meet the rising expenditure on water, electricity, security and lab facilities. Information collected is the state government had stopped the grant given to AU and the reasons for that are financial position of AU and funds received from various agencies. The good news is the higher education department had decided to give its support to AU which is a premier technical university. Steps have been initiated by AU to seek the block grant from the state government. For establishing new courses at Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and Madurai regional campuses, the AU must bear the cost. This was as per an official.
Credits: livechennai.com