Students resent Anna University research fee hike

CHENNAI: The Anna University’s move to increase fees for different research activities has not gone down well with students.The university’s Centre for Research on February 18 published a circular on the revised fee structure for research activities including synopsis submission and institute renewal and sent it to all its affiliated colleges.

As per the revised structure, the research scholars will have to pay at least Rs 8,000 for synopsis submission while it was Rs 6,500 earlier. For resubmission of thesis they will have to pay Rs 12,500 instead of Rs 10,000 and for changing the category, students will have to cough up at least five times more.

Earlier, the university charged only Rs 500 for changing category but now it has been hiked to Rs 2,500. Similarly, for institute recognition research scholars will have to pay Rs 1,50,000 instead of Rs 1,00,000. For supervisor recognition, the PhD and MS students will now have to pay twice the amount. “The fee hike ranges from 20% to 100%. Most of the students pursuing PhD are either unemployed or working as teachers in small institutes. The hike will definitely affect us,” said a student. “We enrolled in AU as we cannot afford the fees of private universities. Authorities should be a bit considerate,” said S Shravan, another student.

However, varsity authorities said the hike was necessary. “We incur expenses when we call externals for evaluating the thesis paper, viva and other activities. Like private universities, we have not mindlessly increased the research fees,” said a senior official.