Panjab University Vice-Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover on Monday had a tough time defending the fee hike and had to leave two meetings abruptly. The first meeting was with research scholars of the university and the second with a student solidarity group from Punjab. The V-C had called a meeting with research scholars at PU Law Auditorium.
“You are saying this is a market, not a university,” shouted a student after Grover explained to students why the fee enhancement is needed to meet the university expenses. As another student said that it is the right of students that taxpayers’ money should be spent on them, Grover said, “I cannot give you that right. You have to go to some other place for that.” Then he left the auditorium, with students raising slogans against him. Grover, earlier, spoke at length about the fee enhancement and said the decision to raise tuition fees had been taken under various difficulties. “It is not going to generate a great deal of money but this is a long-term solution and once this is in place then thereafter, examination and tuition fee will only increase by 10 per cent every year,” Grover told the students, adding that the money is not going towards the salaries of teachers.
Stating that the increase in internal income of the university was necessary to entice the Punjab government and Centre to give more funds to the university, Grover said the Centre already had told the university that enough money was paid for salary and pension of the employees. “They have said the rest has to be managed on our own,” he said. “Contribution from the self-sustaining courses is Rs 50 crore and from traditional courses it is Rs 9 crore. We are only contributing Rs 59 crore from our tuition fees in the current year,” the PU V-C told the students. “Our total expenditure is Rs 474 crore. Punjab government gives us Rs 20 crore and the Central government gave us Rs 198 crore last year.”
Grover said 1,100 times increase in the fee had been witnessed in only two courses like MBA and Chemical Engineering. “MBA fee is Rs 9,000. It was felt if the two-year course fee is raised to Rs 2 lakh, students can easily manage it through loan. When you get a job, Rs 2000 per month would be tiny pressure on the (salary) package,” he said about business management students. He added that it was decided chemical engineering fees should also be raised on a par with other engineering courses.
Explaining why a large amount of the university budget is spent on the salary of employees, Grover said the salary of the employees has to be paid as per UGC norms and it sees an increase every year. “Even if you do nothing, the university expense will increase by 10 to 12 per cent every year,” he said, adding that there should be a rearrangement that if the internal income of the university does not increase then the Punjab government and Centre will take over.
As Grover asked students to ask questions, the research scholars said the fee enhancement was not a long-term solution and it would deprive a large section of students of education. “The policies in the long run will affect a wider section who would not be able to afford education,” said Ankita, a research scholar at the university.
The representatives of Punjab Sangarsh Hamayat Committee, comprising various peasant, labour, trade, youth groups, also met Grover in the afternoon and asked him to roll back the fee hike. “We asked him to withdraw the fee hike because Punjab is on the verge of a financial crisis. We demanded that the police complaint should also be withdrawn and efforts should be made to ensure democratic space is mantained in university,” said Raminder Singh, a member of the delegation.
A statement from the group said the meeting was a failure as “V-C got hyper and walked out” of the meeting. The solidarity committee of 41 organisations earlier also met the Chandigarh SSP to discuss the happenings at the university. The group said it would protest against the fee hike across Punjab on April 19.