GUWAHATI: In a relief to students applying for the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) courses, Gauhati University (GU) has gone back on its previously announced hike of the application fees for these courses. As a gesture of goodwill, they have also decided to refund the students who have already paid the application fees.
The application fees for PhD were doubled this year to what they were before Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). As a result, the fees became twice as costly as the country’s top-ranked PhD institute, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru.
GU PhD application fees were hiked from ₹1,000 in pre-Covid times to ₹2,000 this year. While the application fee for various categories of students is ₹800 in IISc, it is as low as ₹300 in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.
Amidst strong opposition from the student community, the GU authorities announced the rollback through a notification. “The students who have paid the application fee for one subject ₹300 will be refunded and for two subjects ₹1000 will be refunded,” read the notification.
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It noted that the GU vice-chancellor has approved the proposal for a reduction of the application fee for the entrance examinations of PhD and BEd, 2023.
Under the revised fee structure, an applicant will now have to pay ₹1,700 to apply for the PhD entrance test for one subject. Those applying for two subjects will have to pay ₹3,000. The revised application fee for BEd is ₹1700.