Hyderabad: Hefty fee hike stings PhD scholars as govt sits on reimbursement dues

Hyderabad: The ten times hike in fees for the Ph.D courses in Osmania University has put the scholars in a fix as the State government has also not taken a decision over fee reimbursement yet. Following this, scholars and various student unions have urged the officials to rethink on the decision.

According to sources, after a gap of many years, the administration of OU has increased the fees to ten times, Fee for Ph.D. research students of Social Science, Arts, Commerce, Education and Language departments has been increased from Rs 2000 to Rs 20,000, while for Technical and Engineering courses the fee has been hiked from Rs 2,500 to Rs 25,000.

Scholars pointed out that after a gap of six years, the OU issued a Ph.D. admission notification on 16 March 2023. As the admission process has finished, many representations were sent to the authorities from the past two months to withdraw the decision of fee hike.

The increase in fees will particularly affect the research scholars belonging to marginalised communities, as they already go through various academic challenges during their tenure.

After the decision of fee hike was taken, we carried out various protests, staged dharna in front of the Vice-Chancellor’s office in April, boycotted the Research Methodology classes and also organised a signature campaign but all fell in deaf ears,” said Prasanth, Ph.D. research scholar of social science.

“As the university is not able to bear the expenses, it is making us the victim by demanding more fees. The sudden increase in fee has left me in deep concern as I belong to alow income group.

It will be better if the State government releases the fee reimbursement, said Arvind, another PhD research scholar.