Students raising their innocent voices for their Right to Education against their own institute is not a new affair at all.

Just like the students of TISS protested against the charging of tuition fees from scholarship students back in February, students of Birla Institute of Technology Science (BITS) have decided to fight against the exorbitant fee hike announced by the administration.

Fee hike

Coming originally from the students of BITS itself, through the blog posted by The English Press Club of BITS Pilani, thousands of students of all the three campuses of BITS: Pilani, Hyderabad, and Goa, got together to protest against the recently released fee structure for the academic year 2018-2019.

The new fee structure mentions the semester fee to be around Rs. 1,59,000 which is nearly three times the fee back in 2011-12.

Well, to be honest, a fee increase from just Rs. 62,400 back in 2011 to this is damn high and burns a big hole in the pockets of a large number of students.

And this is exactly why, despite the ongoing examinations, students showed up in overwhelming numbers to the mentioned venue to stage a peaceful protest and ask questions to the Director of the Institute regarding the logic behind such an irrational fee hike.

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Why The Fee Hike?

The main reason given by the Director for the sky-high hike in the semester fee was that all other external sources of revenue for the college were drying up and hence they had to rely on students’ fee for funding.

Unlike government colleges which receive grants from the government, according to him, they had no choice but to increase the fees of the students to continue providing quality education to the students.

Another reason mentioned by the Director was lack of alumni support which was not acceptable because the institute has been active in alumni affairs only recently.

Despite the question hour lasting a few hours, students didn’t seem to get satisfactory answers to their queries and this was clearly visible by the series of tweets they made on Twitter voicing their frustrations.

Some students even said that despite frequent fee hikes by the institution in the past, there have been regular power cuts during exams, slowing of internet speed and deteriorating quality of lectures.

Hence, they find it extremely illogical to pay such a huge amount for those services which are unlikely to be changed after the said fee hike.

It seems like there are lots of issues that the administration needs to sort out with its students peacefully by listening and understanding the issues that the students are facing with the proposed fee hike.

Because if this doesn’t happen, it would sadly be a violation of the right of every student to get access to quality education.


Sources: Times of India, The Quartz, The Hindu; English Press Club, BITS Pilani

Image Source: Google Images


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