UGC asks Universities to refund fees of first-year students who opt out of course due to financial constraints

The University Grants Commission has directed all colleges to allow refund of fees for first year graduate and post graduate students for the current year. In a notice, UGC said that due to the pandemic, the Commission has taken into consideration the financial hardships faced by the students.

“In order to avoid financial hardships being faced by the parents due to lockdown and related factors, full refund of fees be made on account of all cancellation of admission/migration of students upto November 30 for this very session as a special case. To be crystal clear, the entire fees including all charged be refunded in totality on account of cancellation or migration,” the UGC directed. It also said that the entire fee collected from a student should be refunded in full with only a deduction of 1000 rupees as processing fees.

The UGC said that it has been receiving several references in the form of RTI applications, complaints, public grievances, court cases about the non refund of the fees that had been collected by institutions. “The Commission has taken a very serious view of such complaints and most of these complaints have come from the students who have taken admission in private or self financing universities or deemed to be universities and then later opted out for some reason,” the statement from Prof Rajnish Jain, the secretary said.

The Commission asked all universities to strictly follow the direction and if it finds that an institution is violating the guidelines by refusing the refund, they shall be liable for punitive action.