Mumbai: The Fee Regulatory Authority (FRA) has slashed the fees for undergraduate professional courses such as BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration), BCA (Bachelor of Computer Applications) and BMS (Bachelor of Management Studies), cutting them in many cases to one-third of the amounts proposed by colleges. Some colleges claimed they had sought annual fees of Rs 70,000-80,000 or more for a programme like BMS but have been permitted to charge only around Rs 25,000. The authority has so far fixed fees for 100-125 of the nearly 550 colleges offering these courses across Maharashtra.This is the first time the FRA is regulating the fees for these programmes. While sources from the FRA said that fees for the programmes have been rationalised for the first time using a cost-based methodology, the decision has not gone down well with colleges, some of which claimed that the approved fee structures are not financially sustainable. Earlier, there was no scientific or uniform basis for determining fees for these courses — some colleges followed the university’s fee structure, and some fixed their own fees, FRA sources claimed. The FRA assesses the actual expenditure incurred by institutions for fixing fees.A principal said the college would seek a review of the FRA’s decision, adding that it would not be financially viable to run the programme with an annual fee of Rs 25,000. “It is not possible to get good teachers and provide good infrastructure in the fee fixed by the FRA. Also, the authority has divided our expenses with the fees of students enrolled in all three years’ batches, when we gave it only for a year,” said the principal.An FRA member, however, said, “Many institutions had calculated expenditure only for first-year students, whereas fee proposals must account for costs incurred across all three years of the programme. Since these courses were brought under the FRA for the first time, many colleges have made mistakes in submitting the proposals and providing detailed expenditure. We took six training sessions with these colleges, despite which there have been mistakes. In many cases, we even added expenditure that colleges have not accounted for.” The member added that the future rate of inflation has also been taken into account while deciding the fees.Courses such as BMS, BBA and BCA were brought under the regulation of All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and classified as professional programmes three years ago. As there were delays in bringing them within the fee regulatory framework, colleges were allowed to continue charging their existing fees over the last two years.After completing two ‘delayed’ admission cycles under the AICTE norms, several city colleges either opted for changing the nomenclature to BCom (Management Studies), effectively moving away from Central regulation, or they split their divisions into two. “We split the batch of 120 into one division under AICTE and we kept one under the university. With such slashing in fees, it will become difficult for us to run the AICTE-regulated division,” a principal said.
