In a significant move, the Maharashtra Fee Regulating Authority (FRA) has granted permission to all professional colleges under the higher education, technical, and agricultural departments to levy substantially higher fees for management and NRI quota seats.
Colleges offering courses in engineering, pharmacy, management, law, teacher training, architecture, and agriculture across Maharashtra can now charge up to three times the regular fee for management quota seats and five times the regular fee for NRI quota seats for both undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) programmes.
Until now, students pursuing UG and PG programmes were charged the same fees, irrespective of their admission quota. With this move, the Fee Regulating Authority has expanded the differential fee policy—previously limited to health science and medical colleges—to include other professional institutions. To ensure consistency in the fee structure, the state has also lowered the maximum fee for management quota seats in PG Health Science courses from four times to three times the regular fee, aligning it with the UG Health Science programme.
The decision was taken during an FRA meeting held in April this year, with the official minutes made public only recently. It follows a recommendation made earlier in February during a meeting chaired by the state’s Higher and Technical Education Minister. According to the statement, technical courses in the state have a combined 20% quota for management and NRI seats, while agriculture programmes have a 20% management quota.
As per the earlier norms notified by the FRA in November 2023, institutions were permitted to charge up to three times the regular fees from students admitted under the management quota, and five times from Non-Resident Indian (NRI) quota candidates for various undergraduate health science programmes such as MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BHMS, and BUMS.
For postgraduate programmes, the fee cap was set at four times the regular fees for management (institute) quota and five times for NRI quota. While UG courses had a combined 15% quota for management and NRI admissions, the quota for PG seats stood at 35% for management and 15% for NRI candidates.
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