Self-financing colleges in dire straits

The Kerala Unaided College Principal’s Council has requested the intervention of the State government in the matter of pending tuition fee payment by a group of students that has put the self-financing colleges across the State in jeopardy.

President of the council Varghese Mathew said that a large number of students had not paid the fee for the current semester from June 2020 to October 2020, though online classes and other teaching-learning activities were in full swing for five hours a day as per the government guidelines.

“Their excuse is COVID-19 as some of their parents have lost jobs due to the pandemic. But there is another section, who have not paid the fees for the previous semester from November 2019 to March 2020. We did not have any pandemic at that time,” Prof. Mathew said adding that there were at least a few students who had defaulted their fees for both the semesters.

There are 958 self-financing colleges in the State under the Kerala, Mahatma Gandhi and Calicut universities. The tuition fee collected from the students was the only mode of income for most of these colleges. The salary of teachers and non-teaching staff was being paid from this income. With so much fee due to be paid, the managements were struggling to carry on, the council pointed out.

The council had requested the Department of Higher Education and the universities to intervene. Meanwhile, the universities had advised the students to pay the pending fee in two or three instalments.