'Admission fee waiver scheme to have more beneficiaries this year'

GUWAHATI: With admission to higher secondary courses having already started and undergraduate and postgraduate admissions around the corner, the Assam government is estimating a 30 to 35 per cent rise in the number of students who will reap the benefits of its admission fee waiver scheme meant for students from a poor financial background.
The fee waiver scheme, which was first introduced in the 2016-17 academic year, does not take caste into consideration - any student is eligible for it if the annual income of his/her parents is less than Rs 2 lakh per annum.
In the 2018-19 academic year, when only students whose parents earned less than 1 lakh were eligible, a total of 2.36 lakh students in the state had been admitted free of cost. But now that ceiling has been doubled - from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh - from this academic session, officials in the state higher education department say that there are expecting a significant growth in the number of beneficiaries this year.
"Last year, 2.36 lakhs students of Assam benefited from the fee waiver scheme. But this year, we are expecting a significant increase in the number of beneficiaries, maybe by 30-35 per cent at least, as the state government has decided to increase the ceiling of parental income from Rs 1 lakh per annum to Rs 2 lakh per year," said director of higher education, Gitimoni Phukan.
The scheme will be applicable to the students seeking admission into first year of higher secondary or BA, BSc, BCom as well as MA, MSc and MCom courses. However, students taking admission in any of the self-financed courses are not eligible for the scheme.
In case of higher secondary and the bachelor degree courses, those students whose fees had been waived off earlier are also eligible to avail the scheme for admission to their second or third year. Similarly, for the notified master degree courses, the final year students whose fees were waived off last year are eligible to apply for it again.
All provincialized and government colleges of the state, as well as Gauhati University, Dibrugarh University, Bodoland University, Cotton University, Kumar Bhaskar Varma Sanskrit and Ancient Studies University and Women's University, Jorhat, have been brought under the ambit of the scheme, said an office memorandum issued by the state higher education department.
However, it clarified that the scheme will not cover private colleges, private universities and central universities situated in Assam.
Though students whose parental income is less than Rs 2 lakh per annum are eligible to avail the scheme, the office memorandum stated that a student will not be eligible for this scheme if either of the parents (mother or father) works in the state government, central government, state or central government undertakings or has a semi-governmental role.