Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Higher Education (HE) department has ordered all government degree colleges coming under its purview not to ask students of self-financing courses (SFCs) who are applying for college leaving certificates (CLC) for full course fees.
Department Secretary Saswat Mishra said in a letter, “It has come to the notice of the department that when students of self-financing courses apply for CLC, they are asked to deposit course fees for all the remaining course years to get CLC. For example, when a first year student of a three-year SFC applies for CLC, he is asked to deposit full course fees for the second and third years failing which he does not get the CLC.
“Since the practice puts huge financial burden on such students, it is hereby ordered that for getting CLC, a student has to pay the course fee only for the current course year. He is not required to pay for the remaining years.”
The HE department had earlier directed the principals of the government and government-aided colleges in Odisha to ensure collection of equal fee for regular subjects, after getting reports that the institutions take normal admission fee fixed by the government from some students and make some seats self-financed to collect more money as admission fee.
The self-financing courses are those on which the Odisha government is not spending anything and the colleges themselves are generating funds for running these courses from the fees collected from students.