DU SOL hikes fees; funds used on other DU colleges, to pay salaries, pension, KYS alleges

NEW DELHI: Krantikari Yuva Sangathan, a student body, staged a protest today against the massive fee hike in several courses offered by the Delhi University’s School of Open Learning (DU SOL). The students claimed that there has been a three-fold increase in the fee in the last 3 years. They also blamed the university for not seeking funds and said “SOL is perhaps the only public educational institution in India that is not at all funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC)”.

“The fees being charged for various courses is more than the fees being charged in regular colleges. For instance, the fees for BA (Hons) Psychology has been increased to Rs 22,520, which is more than the average fees for this course in DU regular colleges such as Jesus and Mary College,” KYS Delhi State Committee member Bhim Kumar said.

The fees for BA programmes in the academic year 2021-22 was Rs 4,040, which was increased by a whopping 119.5%, ie. Rs 8,870.

“Moreover, the fee breakup shows that the students have been charged with ‘university development fund’, ‘college development fund’, ‘university facilities and service charges’, and ‘college facilities and service charges’, etc. The unfortunate reality is that SOL students do not get any facilities either at SOL centres or in the University. The students are not even allowed to freely move within and access the resources of the University,” it said.

DU SOL is a public institution, however, “it is essentially a self-finance institution as since 1997 it has not been given any funds/grants by the Government/UGC”, the students said. The institute was established under the University of Delhi in 1962.

They further claimed that the salaries, pensions of the teaching and non-teaching staff in SOL are paid from the fees collected from students.

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DU SOL students still await study material

While the fee is being increased every year, the students still await study material, basic facilities such as library access at various study centers, and adequate number of classes.

“Each day, thousands of students are being made to line up outside SOL centres for their study material. A large number of such students are made to go away after standing in the sun for hours without providing them with materials,” students said.

They also accused the administration for using a large sum of the fee collected from SOL students for building infrastructure in other DU colleges as well as for starting self-finance courses such as ‘Beauticians’ in collaboration with “shady” private institutes.

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Other student groups and Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) also staged protests and demanded DU to rollback fee hike. “It must be noted that the newly launched SOL 2024-25 prospectus shows a significant increase in the fees, i.e., of Rs. 1000 to Rs. 2000 in every course. This fee hike has been going on since Covid-19 when in 2021 the fees was nearly doubled in a completely arbitrary manner. Now, with each passing year, there is a further increase in fees,” it said in a statement.

In July, DU hiked fees for all UG, PG, and PhD courses, as well as for foreign students seeking admission at the university. DU BTech course fee was increased by 3.70%, from Rs 2.16 lakh to Rs 2.24 lakh and 5-year law course was hiked by 5%. On the other hand, the overall fee for PhD programmes saw a significant increase of 60.22%. In this regard, PhD scholars who used to pay Rs 4,450 will now have to deposit Rs 7,130.