With the state government starting the process of fixing “common fees” for MBBS and BDS seats along the lines of engineering, MBA and MCA courses, the cost of medical education for merit quota students is slated to go up from the next academic year.
The fees for MBBS courses is likely to cross Rs 6 lakh per annum for merit quota seats (category-A) from the existing Rs 60,000. The government, however, will continue to reimburse only Rs 60,000, which means students eligible for the fee reimbursement scheme will have to pay nearly Rs 5.4 lakh on their own. The government had recently put a cap on the fees it will reimburse for engineering courses, Rs 31,000 in this case, and had asked students to bear the additional amount on account of fee hikes due to fixation of “common fees”.
At present, the fees for merit quota seats for MBBS courses is Rs 60,000 per annum. For management quota seats, it’s Rs 5.5 lakh. The government has been reimbursing the entire fees of Rs 60,000 for all students admitted under the merit quota whose family income is less than Rs 1 lakh per annum. College managements, meanwhile, had been demanding common fees of Rs 8 lakh for both the categories. They had argued that as per the government’s own calculations, the medical colleges were incurring an expenditure of Rs 8 lakh per year on MBBS students.