UIET hikes third year fees by 22%, students demand rollback

After the pandemic, the university panel of Punjab University set a 7.5 per cent fee hike for self-financed courses and 5 per cent for traditional courses for new entrants of 2022-2023.

Students for Society (SFS) along with students of the engineering department submitted a memorandum to the Director of UIET, Professor JK Goswamy, regarding the fee hike. They said they strongly condemn the fee hike and demand an immediate and complete roll back of the hike. Additionally, they have demanded it be collected in four installments, along with an extension of the last date, which is August 18.

Prof Goswamy reportedly told the students, “The decision to increase or decrease fees is not in my control. Instead, higher authorities issued me a proposal that I have to sign, which gets circulated further”. He later told the students that he will submit their memorandum to the officials.

“PU authorities, following the neoliberal policy of privatisation, have increased the fee. This trend of fee hike is to kill the essence of public universities. The proposed fee hike will burden the pockets of students, particularly those hailing from marginalised sections of the society,” said Sandeep, president of SFS.
Prateek Choudhary from Rajasthan, a third-year student of BE Mechanical Engineering, said, “Previously the fee for third year was Rs 85,100 and in the new fee structure it has been raised to Rs 1,04,355 which is increased by 22 percentile. It is further distributed into two installments of Rs 65,955 for the 5th semester and Rs 38,400 for 6th semester, which is difficult to pay at one time”.

He added, “The institution has started imposing additional charges, which has an impact on students from middle-class backgrounds”.

“The university must provide an explanation. We have no other choice than to pay the tuition fee, now that our son is in the third year,” said Ashok Kumar, father of Prateek.

Ravi Singh hails from Bihar and is a third-year student of BE Mechanical Engineering under the EWS category. He said,

“According to the fee structure, the third year’s tuition fee was Rs 11,165 when I applied, but it has now increased to Rs 17,940, a 60 per cent increase. This is impossible for me to pay because my father is a farmer with little annual salary”.

“I didn’t even get the hostel and I’m presently residing outside the university premises. This is already costing me money, and now tomorrow is the last date of depositing the tuition fee,” he added.