Maharashtra Private Medical Colleges keep MBBS Fees Unchanged this year, fees reduced by 40 percent at one college

Mumbai: In a major relief to the MBBS aspirants in Maharashtra, several private unaided medical colleges in the State have decided not to increase their annual fees and shockingly the MBBS fees in an institute like Prakash Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Sangli has been slashed by almost 40 per cent.

The information in this regard has been shared by the Fee Regulating Authority (FRA) of the State, which has allowed a reasonable increase of fees ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh in some institutes that demanded increase.

In case of Sangli based Prakash Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, the FRA slashed the fees from Rs 8.4 lakh to Rs 4.8 lakh per annum. The fee authority took this decision on after reviewing the expenditure document submitted by Prakash College last year. Meanwhile, six sought-after medical colleges in the State have decided not to increase their fees, adds TOI.

However, the FRA is yet to declare the fee structure for some medical colleges including Vedantaa Institute of Medical Sciences, Palghar, and ACPM, Dhule, adds HT.

Such a decision is completely contradictory to the last year trend when the overall hike in fees across several unaided MBBS colleges in the State was between Rs 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakhs per annum. Back then, several colleges had cited the deficit in the hospital revenue during the pandemic as the reason for increasing the fees.

While commenting on this, the dean of a Nashik based medical college told HT, "Most medical institutes are still running in deficit, but admissions have already been delayed by a few weeks and the process of getting approval for fee-hike is time consuming. The institutes have decided to hike fees only in the next academic year."

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As per the latest media report by the Times of India, most of the private medical colleges in Maharashtra demanded a fee hike and accordingly FRA allowed a reasonable increase. The authority attended the marathon meetings scheduled last week to fix both the undergraduate and postgraduate medical college fees for facilitating the students in the upcoming admission season.

In this regard, the retired high court Justice Vijay Lakhichand Achliya, chairperson of FRA mentioned that on the basis of the fees collected by the colleges from NRI students, which is considered to be an extra income, the increase in the fees has been kept reasonable. However, the colleges can request for a review on the vasis of proper documentation, he added.

The latest media report by Hindustan Times adds that as per the information shared by FRA, Mumbai based KH Somaiya Medical College and NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences in Nagpur has increased the fees by Rs 1 lakh and Pune based Kashibai Navale Medical College has increased it by less than Rs 30,000 annually.

However, except for these few, six sought-after private medical colleges have decided to keep the fees unchanged. The list includes Talegaon's MIMER, Latur's MIMSR, Solapur's Ashwini Medical College, Nashik's SMBT College, Chiplun's Walawalkar College, and JIIU's IIMSR in Jalna. 

The fees in case of ACPM Dhule, SSPM Medical College, Sindhudurg, Vedantaa Institute of Medical Science are yet to be fixed.

Speaking about the slashing of fees regarding Prakash Institute, a parent said, "Never before have we witnessed a case where annual fees of a medical institute were reduced by 50 per cent. We only hope the FRA has not made an error while sharing this information on their website because any error will leave the students confused."

He further mentioned that despite the FRA releasing the approved fee structure, the students should wait to confirm the final fee structure on the websites of individual colleges before opting for their preferred college and course.

However, the parents and MBBS aspirants are concerned about the highest charging private medical college- Vedanta Institute of Medical Sciences, Palghar. Last year, Vedanta was charging Rs 13.65 lakh as the MBBS fees and the parents are worried if the fees gets increased this year as well. However, FRA is yet to provide any clarity in this regard.

The daily adds that in a separate meeting held in Maharashtra FRA office last week, the officials had decided fixing the ad-hoc fees for the new MBBS or MD/MS courses in the 2022-2023 academic year at Rs 7.5 lakh and Rs 10.5 lakh respectively.