The fate of nearly 25 lakh students who applied for the fee reimbursement scheme and scholarships this year to pursue various professional and other higher education courses hangs in the balance with the state government failing to meet the deadline of January 30 fixed by the Supreme Court to release the funds. The managements have threatened to close all the engineering colleges from February 16 if the government fails to clear the arrears amounting to `4,000 crore by then.

In the absence of funds from the government, the managements are forcing students to pay the fees themselves. Else they will not allow them to sit for the exams, or attend classes. Students from socially and economically weaker sections, who are solely dependent on the scheme to continue their education, are despondent and desperate.

The family of G. Varalaxmi, a first year B. Tech student of Vignan Engineering College, Hayathnagar, alleges that she committed suicide because she was being harassed to pay her fees, though the official version is that she died of burns due to gas from a leaking cylinder .

The scheme, once considered a boon for poor students, has now become the bane of nearly 25 lakh students in the state who have availed of it for professional and other higher education courses in the last three academic years. The government, which is supposed to pay their fees, is in arrears to a staggering `4,000 crore. Colleges that have put up with this situation for many months have now threatened not to admit the students for future courses. Several colleges are collecting fees from students and promising the same will be refunded once they receive the money from the government. Parents have had to borrow money to pay the fees.

“I enrolled my son in a B. Tech course just because of the scheme. He is now in the third year. His second year dues were cleared by the government recently but the third year dues are still pending. Now the management is saying that they will not allow him to attend classes if the dues are not paid in a week. How can I arrange `35,000 when I earn less than `8,000 a month as an office assistant in a private firm?” asked Mr K. Gangadhar.

Lakhs of poor students were able to enroll for professional courses like engineering, medicine, pharmacy, MBA, MCA etc when the government of Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy announced in 2008 that it would bear the expenses.

“As per our estimates, as many as 5 lakh students took admission in engineering courses, 1 lakh each in MBA and MCA and 50,000 in B. Pharmacy courses under the scheme. We are coordinating with the welfare departments concerned to know the exact status of fee arrears,” said the minister for higher education, Mr Damodara Rajanarasimha, who is also part of the nine-member committee constituted by the state government recently to monitor the fee reimbursement scheme.

The scheme attracted even more students when the government raised the annual family income limit to avail of the scheme from `50,000 to `1 lakh and extended the scheme to BCs, EBCs, Minorities and physically-challenged students at par with SCs and STs.

The number of BC students who claimed the benefit was 2,38,377 in the 2006-07 academic year. It doubled to 5,52,431 in 2007-08 and doubled yet again to 11,06,605 students for the 2008- 09 academic year. The scheme was later extended to EBCs from the 2009-10 academic year and 2.80 lakh students applied.

It looks like the government sought to bring more students into the higher education fold without a thought as to how it was going to pay for all this largesse.