Maharashtra regulator rejects state proposal to raise management quota fees in AYUSH colleges

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra Fee Regulating Authority (FRA) has turned down a recommendation by the state government to allow private Ayurveda, Homeopathy and Unani (AYUSH) colleges to charge five times the regular fees for institute or management quota seats. Currently, these institutes can charge up to three and four times the regular fees for undergraduate (UG) and post-graduation (PG) courses, respectively.

In a meeting held on November 14, the authority ruled that there's "no reason" to raise the cap on the maximum fees for management seats at AYUSH colleges as the current academic year’s (2024-25) fee structure has already been approved. It also questioned the institutes' citing their financial liabilities to justify their fee-hike demand, and even suggested that the proposal had an "oblique motive" of covering up overcharging by Ayurveda colleges.

The state medical education department made the recommendation to FRA, an autonomous body responsible for determining the fees for professional courses at private unaided institutes, in July.

It came after a delegation from the Association of Management of Ayurvedic Colleges of Maharashtra met with the state medical education minister Hasan Mushrif and other government officials and requested the fee hike to help them meet their expenses.

Ayurveda Course Fees: Management quota

Following the recommendation, the authority sought the views of the state government as well as the AYUSH department at the central government on the issue. In September, the state reiterated that it had no objection to the colleges' demand.

The proposal came shortly after FRA decided to fix an upper limit to the refundable deposit and caution money charged by the state's private health science institutes, including those offering Ayurveda, Homeopathy and Unani programmes.

The existing norms, notified by FRA in November, 2023, allow AYUSH and medical colleges to charge a maximum of three times the regular fees from students admitted under management quota and five times from Non-Resident Indian (NRI) quota candidates for various undergraduate health science programmes, including MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BHMS and BUMS.

The allowance for PG programmes is four times and five times for institute and NRI quotas, respectively. While there's a 15% combined quota for the two categories in UG courses, as many as 35% PG seats are reserved for the management and 15% for NRI candidates.

Reasons for fee hike ‘false and incorrect’

The colleges had claimed that this amount is insufficient to meet their expenses due to a delay by the state government in reimbursing the scholarship and freeship given to students from various disadvantaged groups and because they are expected to pay salaries to their staff according to the seventh pay commission. However, FRA termed these reasons as "false and incorrect".

"The fees of each of the institutes is decided based upon its income and expenditure. The authority also allows the interest paid over the working capital raised as an expenditure if such loan was secured to meet exigency like payment of salary etc. Therefore the demand of the association not only unjust, improper and contrary to law (sic)," read the minutes of the FRA meeting.

The regulator also said that AYUSH colleges can't seek a fee plan different from what's applicable to other health science programmes. It also asserted that it needs to ensure that the institutes' fees are reasonable and that they shouldn't profiteer.

FRA follows an expense-based model, taking into consideration both operational and non-operational expenditures by the institute, to calculate the maximum fees for each professional college. Besides tuition fees, the colleges are allowed to charge an additional 10-15% amount to carry out developmental work.

AYUSH Admissions: ‘Cover up’ overcharging

Back in 2018, when the regulator had first allowed medical colleges to charge higher fees for the management and NRI quotas, it had substantially slashed - by half, in some cases - the fees meant for those admitted on regular seats. This is because the excess income generated by the institutes through higher charges was used to cross-subsidise the regular fees.

FRA questioned the rationale for increasing the fee limit for management quota seats in Ayurveda colleges as it pointed out that Ayurveda colleges which form the bulk of AYUSH institutes in Maharashtra, in their submissions to FRA, had claimed that they didn't receive fees more than the regular fees from the candidates admitted under management quota. It also notes that the authority has received multiple complaints from medical aspirants alleging that the institutes asked for five times the regular fees.

"Some of the students have complained [about] the denial of admission by such institutes by demanding the fees more than the fees approved by the authority. Therefore there appears to be some oblique motive in raising such demand by some of the institutes to cover up their act of collecting fees more than the fees approved by the authority," read the minutes.