The Fees Regulating Authority (FRA) of Maharashtra, which regulates fees taken from students under the NRI and Management quotas in private colleges, did not have the power so far to fix an upper limit for other professional courses under the same quotas.

But now, it is likely that the FRA would set an upper limit of fees for students in unaided professional colleges wanting to pursue courses in pharmacy, law, engineering, MBA, and many more.

The authority, which was regulating fees for the NRI and management quotas under the medical education department, prohibited private colleges from charging fees exceeding three times the regular fees for management quota seats and not more than five times for NRI quota seats for medical, dental, and other allied health science courses. The extraction of excess fees was not officially done for higher and technical education department’s courses.

Most colleges seeking NRI quota seats apply to the All-India Council of Technical Education stating their infrastructure upgrades to qualify for an approval. In most cases, about 5% of seats are allocated for NRI students from the 20% institutional quota. Though an old practice still exists where NRI students are charged five times the approved FRA fees, most engineering colleges do not seem to be following that, as per current available information. – editor@nrifocus.com