Hyderabad: Cough up Rs 15-20 lakh for engineering seat!

Hyderabad : With no check from the government on the donations collected, private engineering colleges are said to be fleecing students who were seeking admission for BTech courses under the management quota.

Even before the EAMCET counselling began, engineering colleges had sold the seats at higher prices ranging from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. Most of the colleges are demanding money through cash only. Interestingly, the management are not ready to take cheques or online transactions for payment of donation amount.

Demand for BTech (Computer Sciences), IT, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI&ML) and Cyber Security seats are in high demand particularly in the reputed top 20 engineering colleges.

It is learnt that CBIT (Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology) was collecting Rs 15 to Rs 20 lakh donation for core Computer science course. Other top institutions like CVR, Vardhaman Engineering College, Srinidhi Institute of Technology, MGIT, Narayanamma Women Engineering colleges were collecting around Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh for a seat. Some autonomous institutions were offering fee packages with a payment of Rs 2-lakh per annum for four-year degree courses.

According to officials, there is no check on the donations collected by the reputed engineering colleges in Hyderabad. The government has no control on it. Reputed colleges got permission to increase the seats of BTech computer courses by cancelling the mechanical and civil courses. “About 50 percent of the seats are being filled through counselling and the rest are done through management quota. Each college is permitted not less than 200 seats to offer computer courses. Of them, 100 seats are in the hands of college management,” said a source.”

The non –autonomous engineering colleges were also taking advantage of the demand for computer courses and targeted the middle classes.

The college managements were calling the parents over phone and offering seats with about Rs 1 lakh per annum as donation. Tuition fee in these colleges is about Rs 80,000.

Some of the noted colleges already have informed the parents that special classes would be organized for the students admitted under the management quota ahead of starting of the session so that they can get first-hand knowledge of the subject.