Fees for Professional Courses Must Be Fixed Before Admission; Mid-Course Hikes Only in Exceptional Cases: Supreme Court

Students joined the 2023-27 B.Tech course at Dr. B.C. Roy Engineering College, a self-financing college, in September 2023; the prospectus said fees were subject to change as per Government decision (paras 4-5). On 16.10.2023, after a seven-year gap, West Bengal raised the fee ceiling to Rs 1,10,000 a year from the 2023-24 session (paras 6-8). In December 2023 the college revised the batch's fees from the second semester, an increase of 37.5% with a new development fee (para 9). A single judge dismissed the students' writ petitions, but the Division Bench held the revision inapplicable to students admitted before 16.10.2023 and ordered refunds (paras 10-15).

Fee fixation balances three interests: students' certainty about a reasonable fee, institutions' need for adequate resources, and society's interest in timely, reasonable fixation (para 18). Professional education takes a large share of household spending, so certainty is a matter of good governance (paras 19-21). Private institutions need resources and a reasonable return (paras 22-24), and NEP-2020 rejects arbitrary fee increases during enrolment (paras 25-26). Under Regulation 7 of the AICTE Regulations, fees are revised only on the committee's cost-based recommendation and at least three years apart (para 30). Committees must recommend, and authorities decide, before admissions, covering the whole course; a mid-course adjustment is an exception for unforeseen costs (paras 31-33). Here the committee and the State acted inefficiently by revising fees after seven years and after admissions, and the college could not be blamed (para 34). The High Court's result was upheld, but not its view that the revision was retrospective or its use of equity and estoppel (para 35).