Medical colleges make business in Andhra Pradesh

2007
By Syed Akbar
Hyderabad, Aug 9: Private medical colleges have once again flouted admission rules by charging as high as Rs 60 lakh per MBBS seat this academic year.
Non-minority private medical colleges should collect a maximum of Rs 4 lakh towards tuition fee per year. This works out to Rs 20 lakh for the five-year MBBS course. But many colleges have charged students three times the maximum fee prescribed by the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee appointed by the State government.
Seventy per cent of seats in a private medical college, both minority and non-minority, are filled up by the convener of EAMCET through online counselling. The admissions for the remaining 30 per cent of the seats are left to the management but they have to follow the fee norms prescribed by the State government.
Students seeking admission into C category management seats need not qualify in EAMCET. The minimum qualification for admission is intermediate. Minority colleges have a total of 75 seats under management quota. Non-minority private medical colleges have about 500 seats under their control.
According to sources, some medical colleges sold the seats for as high as Rs 60 lakh. This is up by Rs 10 lakh over last year's price of Rs 50 lakh. Interestingly, the rates of medical seats in neighbouring Karnataka have come down to around Rs 32 lakh this year thanks to heavy competition there.
However, in the case of Andhra Pradesh there are a limited number of medical seats with virtually no competition among the private managements. PK Agarwal, member-secretary of the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee for medical and dental courses, issued orders on July 6 fixing maximum fee limits for the academic years 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10.
The order says "fee up to Rs 4 lakh per annum for each student for 30 per cent C category management seats has been fixed" till the academic year 2009-10 for non-minority medical colleges. The fee structure fixed for minority colleges is Rs 5 lakh.
In case of dental colleges, the fee fixed is Rs 2 lakh for management quota seats for non-minority colleges and Rs 2.5 lakh for minority seats.