The fees for engineering, MBA and MCA courses in the state are set for a hike from the next academic year onwards, following the Andhra Pradesh High Court’s orders on fixing “uniform fee” for convenor and management quota seats.

Currently, the fee for engineering courses in convenor quota is `31,000 per annum. It is expected to go up to about `50,000.

The state government is planning to go for an appeal over the judgement after seeking an opinion from the legal department.

The state government is concerned that if the fee structure goes up on account of the High Court orders, it will put enormous financial burden on it since it has been bearing the fee of nearly 80 per cent
students under the fee reimbursement scheme.

The state government has been struggling to pay the fee arrears of previous years and it paid the arrears amounting to `3,5000 crore recently only after the Supreme Court intervened.

Moreover, the fee structure will vary from college to college unlike in the existing system wherein the government prescribes uniform fee for all the colleges across the state.

In some of the top colleges like CBIT, Sri Nidhi, Vasavi, Gokaraju Rangaraju etc., the fee could be even more than `50,000 per annum.

These colleges will also have the provision to approach the government for further increase in fee structure based on the quality of faculty and infrastructure they offer under the new system.