Decision on engineering courses fee revision soon, says Min Narayan

Mangaluru: Higher Education Dr Ashwath Narayan said that a special meeting on the issue of fee revision for engineering colleges will be held in the second week of September.

Speaking at a news conference here he said, “Fee revision is done once a year for medical and dental courses. But there has been no revision of fees of engineering colleges for the last three years. A meeting would be held and a proper decision would be taken.”

“There is no aspect in the far-reaching and scientifically formulated National Education Policy that can be detrimental to students. The new policy is being opposed only for political reasons. Five and a half years of consultations with educational institutions, teachers and citizens were held before the policy was formulated. There is no substance in the accusation that education is being saffronised and imposed by the Central government. Under the new National Education Policy all universities have been given the freedom to adopt the kind of education they want,” he said.

“The CET results will be declared on September 20. Counselling will be held online after that and only the last mop-up counselling will be done offline. Graduation classes are yet to start in some districts,” he added.

Replying to the allegation that other language learning opportunities are reduced in the new education policy, the minister said, “free choice has been allowed in relation to language. Though Kannada is compulsory, students will be allowed to choose other languages. A trilingual formula will be adopted. Therefore, there will be no need to close any language department.”