Forget AICTE norms, GU for higher fees in self-financed MBA colleges

A huge skeleton has just tumbled out of the Gujarat University’s cupboard. Students have been paying Rs 10,000 for free seats and Rs 47...

A huge skeleton has just tumbled out of the Gujarat University’s cupboard. Students have been paying Rs 10,000 for free seats and Rs 47,500 for payment seats for the MBA course instead of the Rs 4,500 and Rs 35,000 they should be paying. In all, they’ve been fleeced of over Rs 3.7 crore over the past three years.

Top university officials side-stepped norms laid down by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and formed their own ‘‘one-member committees’’ to fix the fee structure for self-financed MBA and MCA colleges.

Officials in Education Department said approval for a higher fee structure than the one recommended by the state-level fee committee — formed under the AICTE’s direction — was given on May 15, 2000, when K.S. Shastri was the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Naresh Ved was Vice-Chancellor. One of the beneficiaries of this decision was Shastri’s son Pragnesh who runs Som Lalit Institute.

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In a report to the government, V-C A.U. Patel stated that under Section 23 of the AICTE Act, the AICTE has to form a standing committee for each state to fix the ceiling of fees. The state government had formed such a committee but the university did not follow its recommendations. As many as 19 colleges benefited from the decision.

Sources said university officials are defending their action by referring to an AICTE letter addressed to then Director of Technical Education M.C. Chabariya regarding fixation of development fee for pharmacy, management, architecture and engineering institutes, which makes no mention of MCA course. It recommended Rs 7,000 as development fees for free seats and Rs 17,500 for payment seats.

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