After a seven-year hiatus, Ahmedabad-based Gujarat Vidyapith has increased fees by an average of 10% for all of its programmes, from undergraduate to research.
The revised fee structure reduces the fee range for all programmes from Rs 5,400 to Rs 13,500 per semester to Rs 6,000 to Rs 15,000 per semester. Additionally, there will be a one-time registration fee of Rs 1,000.
“The hike has been kept nominal at only 10 per cent,” Gujarat Vidyapith Vice-Chancellor Prof Bharat Joshi told The Indian Express. It was forced to take the decision to increase its internal receipts owing to curtailing of funding from the University Grants Commission (UGC), the university set up by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920, stated. However, even after the hike, the fee structure is comparatively lower than other universities, the authorities claimed, as they said the hike will not impact the students.
“Since a majority of the students are from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who do not have to bear the fee burden as it is reimbursed by the government under scholarship schemes, this is not going to affect the students much,” Prof Joshi added justifying the hike. The fee hike is seen as another major overhaul the Gandhian institute witnessed this month.
Known and valued for its minimal fee structure, the deemed to be university is funded by UGC under three heads — salary, non-salary and pension funds. While salary and pension are entirely funded by the UGC, the central commission ceased funding the non-salary component from 2018. The commission then asked the universities to increase their internal receipts that majorly came from students’ fee along with revenues from patents and consultancy. Sources revealed that the non-salary component is around Rs 4 crore of Vidyapith’s annual budget of Rs 60 crore.
The increase was suggested by the Finance Committee, which met on May 8 and took into account a number of factors before recommending it. The Board of Management then adopted a resolution approving the proposal to raise the fees for the academic years 2023–2024 and 2024–2025.
In addition, the fee structure for each programme divided under around 15-20 heads has now been reduced to six. “There is a new fee structure as we have simplified the fee structure and cut down on the heads under which it was charged earlier. Earlier, there was a lot of bifurcation under one head. This has been done away with,” said Prof Joshi.