Capitation fees: new bill makes it a criminal offence

Pushing educational reform a little further, the union cabinet on Friday cleared three bills related to the sector. The most prominent of these is the prohibition of unfair practices in technical, medical educational institutions and universities bill, which seeks to make capitation fee a cognizable offence.

The bill recommends a maximum of three years imprisonment and a fine of Rs50 lakh for charging a capitation fee (or money for admission, over and above the course fees) and putting out misleading advertisements or wilfully giving wrong information in the prospectus.

Charging of any fee other than those disclosed in the prospectus of the institute will be considered a cognisable offence, which means they will be dealt with in court.

"We are very serious about capitation fee. It is destroying our education system," union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal told journalists on Friday evening.

The ministry has been concerned over some technical and medical institutes and universities resorting to unfair practices. These include charging capitation fee and demanding donations, not issuing receipts for payments made by or on behalf of students, admission to professional programmes of study through non-transparent and questionable processes, low-quality delivery of education services not in keeping with promises made, misleading advertisements in the media with an intention to cheat, unqualified or ineligible teaching faculty, and forcible withholding of certificates and other documents.

The two other bills cleared were the national accreditation regulatory authority for higher educational institutions bill, 2010, and the educational tribunals bill, 2010. It may be recalled that the foreign education providers bill, clearing the way for foreign educational institutions to operate in India, was cleared last week