Government regulation of tuition fees has become a major headache for private schools and higher education institutions in the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million). Complaints to the effect that they are spending more time and money in courts of law than in administering their education institutions, are becoming louder.  

On June 8, the Madras high court passed an interim order capping the tuition fee levied by the state’s eight deemed-to-be (private) universities for the five-year undergraduate MBBS degree programme at Rs.13 lakh per year. The court directed a UGC committee headed by R.C. Deka of the Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to finalise the maximum fees payable by MBBS students of deemed universities by October 31. While passing the interlocutory order, the court noted that prima-facie the tuition fees of Rs.25-35 lakh per annum prescribed by the eight deemed-to-be universities are “far too high” and directed them to accept Rs.13 lakh at the time of admission to be adjusted later according to the verdict of the Deka committee. 

The writ petition was filed last year following complaints from parents and students that deemed universities in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry had substantially increased their MBBS programme tuition fees after the Supreme Court mandated NEET as the sole entrance exam for admission into all medical colleges countrywide on April 11, 2016, effectively ending the practice of college/varsity managements levying sky-high capitation fees for admissions under the management quota. Since NEET scores in order of merit became the sole criterion for admission into the country’s 476 government and private medical colleges/universities, deemed university managements factored in fees they would have received under the management quota into the common tuition fee payable by all students. In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that other deemed-to-be universities across the country have also increased their MBBS tuition fees which currently range from Rs.22-26 lakh per annum. 

“The overheads of running a multi-specialty university hospital such as ours are very high. We have 1,600 beds and treat nearly 4,000 out-patients free-of-charge every day. We also run rural health centres where 200-300 patients are treated free-of-charge. These social welfare measures cannot be cancelled to subsidise students. Moreover, we pay our faculty very well and offer students excellent infrastructure and other facilities. All this has been carefully factored into our common tuition fee of Rs.22 lakh per year,” says Dr. S. Anandan, dean of the Sri Ramachandra Medical College & Research Institute, Chennai (SRMCRI).

Parents of students who failed to secure admission into Tamil Nadu’s 22 government medical colleges which prescribe rock-bottom tuition fees of Rs.11,500 per annum, are outraged by the huge fee differential between government and private medical colleges. This prompted the writ petition and the June 8 interim order of the Madras high court. But private medical institutions have a strong case because costs of providing contemporary medical education are high worldwide. For instance annual tuition fees in US public medical colleges range between $20,770-35,000 (Rs.14-24 lakh) and $47,000-55,000 (Rs.32-37 lakh) in private non-profit medical colleges. It’s pertinent to note that a vacation bench of the Supreme Court has already granted a stay on the high court order to SRMCRI and permitted it to charge Rs.22 lakh, pending the verdict of the Deka committee report. 
Prescient monitors of the education scene in Tamil Nadu are unanimous that the spate of writ petitions, court orders, establishment of government committees to determine fair tuition fees are the consequence of a chronic demand-supply disequilibrium, especially in medical education, the outcome of decades of under-investment in public and private education. This allows private medical education institutions to hike overt and covert tuition fees at will. Around 43,935 students from Tamil Nadu who passed NEET and applied for MBBS admission this year are competing for a total of 5,635 seats in 22 government and 12 private medical colleges. Although the annual tuition fee in government medical colleges is a mere Rs.11,500 per annum, and private medical colleges levy annual tuition fees ranging from Rs.6-15 lakh, deemed universities, which don’t fall within the purview of the state fee fixation committee, prescribe Rs.18-25 lakh per annum. 

“The solution is to promote additional government medical colleges and encourage promotion of private colleges. Healthy competition between state and private colleges will enhance quality of medical education and prompt price competition,” says a medical college administrator in Tamil Nadu who does not wish to be named.

Strangely this self-evident solution seems to be beyond the ken of the state government’s fractious political leaders and unwarrantedly acclaimed bureaucracy and judiciary. Instead, they continue to impose patchwork solutions, making the messy situation messier. 

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)