JNU students not alone in protesting against fee hike: Here are varsities missed by national media

JNU students protesting against fee hike (File image: Twitter/@JNUSUOfficial)

Student protests in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) against hostel fee hike, are showing no signs of simmering down. On December 9, students marching towards the Rashtrapati Bhavan were reportedly baton-charged by the police. Many were detained.

According to JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, "Several students, including women, have been detained by police which brutally attacked the protesters, asking us to go back to campus."

Students, who were seen raising slogans like "Delhi Police go back" and "Education must be free for all", said that they will not budge until their demand for a complete rollback of the hostel fee hike is met. The JNUTA, a teacher’s association, has also called a sit-in in solidarity with the student’s demands.

The students have been protesting for over a month and have now called for boycotting of examinations till their demands are met. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) is holding parleys with the student council in an attempt to find a middle ground. Meanwhile, Vice Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar entered the administration block of the varsity on December 12, under police escort.

However, JNU is not the only university where students are protesting against a fee hike, even though it hogs most of the national media space. Students across varsities are expressing their ire over the unaffordability of quality education:

IIMC

Earlier in December, students from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) in New Delhi challenged the current fee structure of the institution and threatened to not pay the fee of the second semester if their demands were not met.

IIMC is a public-funded institute and the Information and Broadcast Ministry’s premier media training institute.

Students were seen burning the fee hike notification circular. Radio and television journalism students have to pay a total fee of Rs 1,68,500. The fee for the course was Rs 1,45,000 last year and Rs 1,32,000 before that. There have been similar fee hikes for other streams as well. However, the administration has assured the students that their demands are being looked into.

Ayurvedic colleges in Uttarakhand

Similarly, in November, a large number of students took to the streets in Dehradun, protesting against the increase in fee by Uttarakhand’s educational institutions. They demanded roll back. The state’s prominent Ayurvedic colleges have hiked the fee nearly 300 times in the last four years.

National Students' Union of India (NSUI) state president Mohan Bhandari told The Times of India, “It is not justified that Ayurvedic students are on hunger strike for the last 27 days, that too in the state capital, and the government is paying no heed to their genuine complaint. How can a college hike its fee from Rs 85,000 to Rs 2.8 lakh?”

Meanwhile, a girls-only institution -- the MKP PG College -- saw hundreds of students blocking roads and protesting in Dehradun against the decision of fee hike by Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University (HNBGU).

The university has increased the examination fee from Rs 700 to Rs 2,100 for the ongoing academic session. Opposing the notification, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) president Manisha Rana said that the university cannot hike fees in the middle of the session.

Besides, the protests in IIMC and JNU are also against a prescribed dress code, and demanding longer access to libraries.

IITs

Students from the premiere Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), from across the nation, are planning to revive their protests against the HRD Ministry’s decision to hike the fee of MTech students ten-fold and also discontinue their stipend.

MTech students from IITs were agitated when the IIT Council decided to end their monthly stipend of Rs 12,400 and raised the tuition fee from Rs 5,000-25,000 to Rs 2 lakh.

The HRD Ministry has now deferred its decision on the matter. Even though the ministry did not comment on the reasons behind putting the decision on hold, the move came in the wake of JNU students’ protest.

AIIMS

AIIMS Resident Doctors Association (RDA) has also strongly opposed the Centre’s proposal to review the tuition fees for students of the prestigious medical institute.

The proposal also wanted a review of the user charges for various diagnostic procedures like blood tests, X-rays and OPD charges for its patients.

"Quality education and healthcare are the building blocks of our nation and we will not allow any person, organization or the government to compromise on them in any aspect," AIIMS RDA said in a statement.

TISS

Students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai as well as Hyderabad, had protested against hostel fee hike in February-March. Sporadic protests also took place in April through June.

Students were waging a battle against the institute for increasing the hostel fee and dining hall charges for Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST) students from Rs 4,000 to Rs 60,000 per year. This happened as they institute withdrew a provision which had kept SC/ST and Other Backward Class (OBC) students immune from fee hike.

A student told Moneycontrol, that though the hike was not for the 2017-19 batch, they were protesting for the new incoming batches, as SC/ST students come from “backgrounds which can not necessarily afford that much fee”.

The student also told us that the SC/ST Commission, after visiting the campus, had recommended that “no hostel charges and dining hall charges should be collected from SC/ST students” and that the administration had not paid heed to it.

National Law University

The National Law University (NLU) in Bengaluru and Odisha also witnessed massive protests by students in July over various administrative issues, including fee hike.

The state-funded institutions, located in 19 states across India, offer five-year courses like BA LLB (Hons). The average fee for the course is Rs 1.3-2 lakh per year. And this does not include hostel fees, which is around Rs 90,000 per year.