Mumbai: From the 2027-28 academic session, the fees declared in the first year by private and professional colleges for NRI and management quotas will be considered as the fees for the entire duration of a course while calculating their income for the purpose of fee fixation. Sources from the state’s Fee Regulatory Authority (FRA) said the move comes after they found several colleges do not truthfully declare the ‘premium’ fees they collect from students admitted under these quotas.An official said, “Colleges in their submissions to the FRA have claimed that while they declare fees at three times the regular fee for management quota and five times for NRI quota, students often do not pay the additional amount after the first year.” FRA will now assume the fee declared in the first year continues throughout the course, rather than accepting lower collections reported by colleges in subsequent years. This will also ensure the higher fees charged under these quotas are taken into account while fixing fees for merit-seat students, as these fees are meant to cross-subsidise the latter.The new norms for the fee fixation process for 2027-28, passed recently, are similar to last year, except for the usage charges allowed to colleges and the norms for how fees collected from NRI and management quota students will be considered while fixing fees.The norms state: “The institution has liberty to decide its fee to the extent of the upper limit allowed for these quotas. However, they have to decide these before the start of the admission process and declare it publicly.” It added the fees declared for a particular batch cannot be revised till the course completion of that particular batch without prior approval of FRA.An official said there are a few instances of medical colleges that genuinely declared the ‘premium’ fees charged from students in NRI and management quotas and after the calculation process, their merit fee had to be slashed. “On the other hand, many colleges did not truthfully declare these additional fees in their income statements and therefore, their tuition fees went up,” he said.A trustee of a group of professional institutions said one cannot go by what FRA is stating. “It is true that many students do not pay three times or five times the regular fee after the first year. It is not sustainable for many, especially for courses like MBBS. Even if we consider the ad hoc fee of Rs 9 lakh, not all students will be able to afford Rs 27 lakh or Rs 45 lakh per year for four and a half years,” said the trustee, adding one has to find out how colleges deal with such cases. FRA stated colleges can be penalised for providing misleading, false, incorrect or incomplete information.
