Towards the end of every calendar year, wrangling between the Karnataka state government and the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges-Karnataka (Comed-K), the representative organisation of the state’s 184 private unaided professional colleges, over seat-sharing and tuition fees has become an annual ritual in this southern state (pop.57 million). Every year state government representatives engage in lengthy discussions with Comed-K over the percentage of seats in private professional colleges to be allotted to students who top the state government’s common entrance test (CET) and the below-cost-of-provision tuition fees to be paid by them.
In the academic year starting July 2010, under an agreement concluded between the state government and Comed-K in February last year, 50 percent of engineering, 42 percent medical and 35 percent dental seats in the state’s 184 private professional colleges were allotted to students who topped the CET exam at government prescribed fees. The remainder were allotted to students who topped the Comed-K’s own entrance exam, again at government prescribed tuition fees.
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On November 19, a Comed-K press release announced this agreement of last year doesn’t hold good for the next academic year beginning July 2011, and that its 184 member colleges “will not share a single seat with the state government in the next academic year 2011-12”. This announcement of Comed-K has been prompted by Karnataka’s incumbent BJP government’s failure to submit the consensual agreement of February 2010 to the Supreme Court for its approval as per the court’s judgements in the T.M.A. Pai Foundation (2002), Islamic Academy (2003) and P.A. Inamdar vs State of Maharashtra (2005) cases.
In their judgements in these landmark cases, the apex court freed private, unaided institutions of professional education from all admission and tuition fee restrictions, while mandating that consensual agreements over seat sharing and tuition fee structures between state governments and private professional colleges should be submitted to it for approval. According to a Comed-K spokesperson, even though the 2010-11 seat-sharing agreement was signed eight months ago, the state government has failed to submit it to the Supreme Court for its approval “displaying a complete lack of respect for the court’s directive”.
Unsurprisingly, there’s considerable heart-burn within private professional colleges that despite three apex court judgements upholding their right to determine their own tuition fees and admission procedures, the state government continues to browbeat, harangue and arm-twist them to allocate upto half their seats to students topping CET.
Not only that, the state government continues to insist that these students pay government prescribed tuition fees. In the academic year 2010-11 CET quota engineering students are liable to pay a mere Rs.30,000 per year while medical and dental students are obliged to pay Rs.45,000 and Rs.32,500 annually. On the other hand Comed-K exam toppers are levied annual tuition fees of Rs.1.25 lakh for engineering, Rs.3.25 lakh for medicine, Rs.2.3 lakh for dental education — again as prescribed by the state government.
This varying tuition fees schema devised by the state government was challenged in the Karnataka high court and in a judgement delivered in November 2009, Justices Gopal Gowda and N. Ananda struck it down for being discriminatory. Subsequently last May the state government set up a fees fixation committee headed by Justice (Retd.) B. Padmaraj. The committee was given the mandate to hold discussions separately with each of the 184 private unaided professional colleges and prescribe an appropriate fees structure for each institution. The panel is scheduled to submit its report by February end.
Meanwhile the state government continues to insist on maintenance of the admission and fees status quo for the academic year 2011-12. A December 2 meeting between education minister V.S. Acharya and Comed-K representatives proved inconclusive. According to Dr. S. Kumar, executive secretary of Comed-K and principal and dean of Bangalore’s well-reputed M.S. Ramaiah Medical College, Comed-K will not enter into a new seat-sharing pact with the state government until last year’s consensual agreement is submitted to the Supreme Court. “We will also wait for the Justice Padmaraj committee to submit its report on tuition fees chargeable by each college. Despite three judgements of the Supreme Court giving us the freedom to determine our own admission processes and tuition fees, we have been forced by successive state governments to give in to their seat sharing and subsidised tuition fee demands. The fallout of such subsidisation is that our member colleges are unable to invest in improving infrastructure, research facilities or employ high-quality faculty,” says Kumar.
Unmindful of constitutional or quality-of-education issues, higher education minister V.S. Acharya threatens legislation “which will enforce the association (Comed-K) to fall in line in the interest of students”. Moreover while delivering a lecture at Mangalore University on December 28, Union law minister Veerappa Moily revealed that the Union government will set up a “regulator” shortly to monitor the tuition fees structures of private professional colleges countrywide to ensure “poor and common students are not deprived of higher education”.
Evidently, the practice of obdurate Union and state governments imposing the burden of educating “poor and common students” upon private unaided professional colleges is too deeply entrenched and crucial to preservation of the middle class vote banks of the state’s politicians.
Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore)