This post is about the fees that some NLUs charge. 

This table contains the amount of fees that the respective college is going to charge for this year's batch. Last retrieved on 18th June 2010 from the respective college's website. 

There are a lot of things that come to mind when we look at the above table. Just by looking at it for a minute. The 6 randomly chosen colleges have been arranged in the descending order of their fees. The fees for General category and ST/SC's is different.  None of my concerns are related to any particular college. They are all general in nature. I have voiced these concerns to a lot of people and I was not satisfied by the answers they gave. I thought this might be a good place to ask.

My concerns

1)      Exorbitant fees

I mean c’mon. How can common people afford such high fees. It is not something that a middle class citizen of India can afford. This would make the colleges elitist. Only rich people can study here. I don’t think that was the motive behind the creation of NLUs.

Add to the fees, the pocket money and other such expenses that are to be taken care of. Hostel and food are covered in some colleges. Books are a very big expense too. You cannot always depend on the library, especially not during the exams. There are at the most 5 copies of a book generally and around 100 students fighting for it. If it’s not issued then someone might be using it. Laptops are quickly becoming a necessity. College computers are not the best substitutes. Students who don’t have a laptop struggle to keep pace with the others. Scholarship is only for the lucky few.

Add to this the fact that government and UGC usually gives these colleges a lot of money by way of grants. Government also gives subsidies like free land for the campus, no property tax, easy permissions etc. So if almost everything is paid by the government then what are they charging us this much for?

Faculties on the other hand always cry for more salary. Their salary is decided by the government and is completely manageable even if the college reduces the fees to half.

Imagine this, a college has 120 students and the fee paid by them is 1.2 lahks per student. It means that the college gets Rs. 14,40,00,000 or fourteen crores forty lakhs as salary. If each faculty is given 30,000 per month (that’s the average salary of a NLU faculty) and the total number of faculties is taken as 30 (including the part timers) then the total expense on faculties salary is 30*30,000*12= 1,44,00,000. Now do the remaining math yourself. Add administrative cost, moot and other events sponsorship (if applicable to your college).

Final figure will tell you how much your college rakes in every year. Plus, the fees keep on increasing due to inflation.

Will the middle class student stand up?

2)      SC/ST

I would like to clarify in the beginning that I am not against reservation (the concept), I do not like how it is being implemented.

Consider the above fees. Now imagine how much should the salary of a person be to pay such a huge amount at once. If not at once then even EMI’s of loans would be very high. If a person can afford to pay it, is he/she not a part of the creamy layer? If you can pay 1.2 lakhs per year, it means that you earn around 4-5 lakhs minimum (not always but generally). So how can you not be a part of the creamy layer? You are paying taxes on your income. Not like SC/ST’s get a lot of subsidy on the fees or anything. It just helps the creamy layer an easy admission. Think about it. I am not clear on this point so I have put it up as a concern.

My understanding on the topic at hand is still very primary. These are more like questions rather than conclusions. No offence is meant to anyone. I do not wish to accuse people of anything so do not comment on the post saying “ You are discriminatory dog.” Or something like that. ( I have been called that once by someone who did not understand my argument in a debate. Its quite embarrassing when that happens in public. True story. ) 

Thank You !

Phoenix. :)  

P.S. I have a lot of incomplete blogs with me. Now I am completing them and posting them back to back.

P.S.S. Constructive suggestions and requests for any specific kind of posts is always welcome