Lower enrolment: Panjab University cuts Rs 13 crore from revised annual budget for 2019-20

CHANDIGARH: Panjab University board of finance (BoF) has reduced about Rs 13 crore from the university's annual budget in preparing the revised estimates for 2019-20 recently, indicating that PU's enrolment in various courses has come down. The budget estimates prepared earlier had projected PU's annual income at Rs 577 crore. The revised estimate, however, brought it down to Rs 564 crore.


While preparing the earlier estimate, the university had included additional revenue to the tune of Rs 9-10 crore, which was projected in view of various measures proposed by PU, such as enhancement in the enrolment of students in the University School of Open Learning (USOL), initiation of MOOCs (online learning) courses, enhancement of seats in certain courses, admission of foreign/NRI students and fee structure of foreign/NRI students, rationalization of fee structure of existing courses and so on.

The income from USOL was projected to be Rs 19.5 crore, which came down to Rs 15 crore in revised estimates. The income from hostels, too, came down from Rs 14 crore to Rs 10 crore in the revised estimates. The university, though increased the seats of foreign nationals and NRI students to 15% this year, faced a hard time in filling the seats. Sources said a lot of these seats were lying vacant despite PU extending deadlines for NRI students multiple times up to September 18. The session in the university had started in July.

PU had also changed rules for NRI admissions besides hiking their fee. Foreign nationals and NRIs wanting to enrol themselves at PU had to pay up to 20 times higher fee than their Indian counterparts. Under the NRI quota, the university will not only admit NRI students, but also those candidates who have any first-degree NRI relative in their family. The relatives include maternal and paternal grandparents, uncles and aunts and also cousins. The adopted and foster children of the NRIs can also apply.

Once admitted under the NRI quota, a student will have to pay the applicable fee for the entire course and will not be able to change his/her category while pursuing any other course at the university in future. While the university officials refused to comment, sources said the reduction in projected income of teaching departments, both traditional as well as self-financed, indicated that the enrolment in the university had come down since it had went ahead with hiking the planned fee despite multiple protests.

The university has brought down the revised estimated income of self-financed courses to Rs 58.71 crore from Rs 65.5 crore and that of traditional teaching departments to Rs 11 crore from Rs 14.5 crore. The revenue from fee of examinations, which is the largest source of income for PU, besides the annual grants from the UGC, ministry of human resources and development (MHRD) and Punjab government, has remained unchanged at Rs 155 crore.

The university's other revenue sources, such as affiliation fee, late fee, sale of admission forms, rent of guest houses, lapsed securities and so on have been projected to increase in the revised estimates to about Rs 16 crore from Rs 11.5 crore. PU gets an annual maintenance grant of Rs 233 crore from UGC/MHRD and Rs 36 crore from Punjab government. The shortage of around Rs 300 crore is fulfilled through various fee (teaching, hostels, examination etc) and other income sources.


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