Bhubaneswar Oct 29: The Skill Development and Technical Education (SDTE) department of the government of Odisha has issued show cause notices to as many as 78 technical institutions for non-compliance of their fee calculation structures.
The technical institutions providing professional courses reportedly came under the radar of the Fee Structure Committee (FSC) of the Skill Development and Technical Education (SDTE) department for failing to furnish data on the calculation of fee structure for the 2023-24 academic session within the stipulated time scheduled by the government.
The fee structure of 78 institutes could not be determined during the sixth meeting of the FSC, said SDTE officials as they did not share the required information and data sought for calculation. The committee could only finalise the fee structure for four diploma institutes, three BTech, four MTech, two MBA, one MCA, three BPharma and two MPharma institutes during its meeting.
In the case of recently opened institutes that lack an audited balance sheet for the determination of fee structure, the panel decided to fix a fee on an ad-hoc basis as per the fee structure of a nearby institute established recently.
Accordingly, it allowed the fee structure of DRIEMS Institute of Health Sciences and Hospital, Cuttack on par with another private medical college in Bhubaneswar till further decision of the FSC. A similar decision was taken for Sri Sri College of Ayurvedic Science and Research Hospital in Cuttack and Sohpitorium Engineering School at Baniatangi in Khurda.
Worth mentioning, the FSC determined the fee structure of the private technical and professional institutes at a seven percent Consumer Price Index over the fee calculated from the 2022-23 academic session. However, with the 2022-23 academic session already over and the 2023-24 academic session in force, the committee did not feel it would be wise to implement the fee structure retrospectively,
