ello all
So college has well and truly begun. Insane levels of stress and stupidity with festival preparations, lectures attended, lectures missed, alien FYs and grumpy professors.
Yes, nothing has changed from last year.
Except for the small matter of a 33% fee increase!
Completely out of the blue, for no given explanation the college goes and ups our fees by no less than Rs. 6000. And the interesting part is, the bulk of those fees come from our very inflated tuition fees.
Now if the books we used and the subject material the teachers used were made out of crude oil barrels I might have understood, but they're not and a rough estimate of how much MORE my college will be raking in because of this is about Rs. 11 Lakh.
11 Lakh. Last year's salary expenses for our department alone was just shy of 10 lakhs. Once again I stress that the figure of 11 lakh is how much MORE money they're taking in.
So you'd figure theyll increase the teacher's salaries right? I mean our professors do work their asses off and it IS entirely selfless for the most part and it's hard to accuse any of them of being anything short of decent.
But the salary increase is marginal at best. So then, where IS the money going? I know for a fact that we're one of the only colleges who actually went and upped the fees. I shan't name names but there are several colleges who have chosen NOT to have such a sharp increase. There's even a college getting ready to construct a sound recording studio...!
And guess what, it's not us!
The Vice Chancellor is his all his transparent glory has uploaded his budget for the year on the Mumbai University Website. I'd link but the site is down at the time of typing this.
It includes provisions of Lakhs of Rupees as 'incentive' to 'attend international teacher conferences.' Fair enough. A few more lakhs are going into researching the possibility of being listed on the BSE. Once again a smart investment I'd say. But then it gets a little, how do I put it- Vague. Several lakhs have been put away as 'incentive' (they do love the word!) to enter the 'top 400 universities in the world' and as further 'incentive' to the new autonomous departments.
Now I've not seen any official documents. I haven't run any RTIs. I've used Google and asked a few very simple questions. I cannot do any more than speculate as to what is going on at the university and I cannot honestly say it's all shady.
All I can say is (and this is where the theme comes in) why is nobody asking?
Why is nobody bothered enough to give a fuck and question the things being done?
If there was one thing I'd change about my college, it'd be the mass apathy of it's students. My college has recently grown anal retentive and decided we can't enter after three because we 'walk around and go to the canteen!' We can't even sit on the beautiful steps we've sat on for a year because it makes things look 'ugly.'
The changes are drastic and horribly annoying. If I didn't know any better I'd say I was in fucking Xaviers! But the student reaction has baffled me even more.
A petition has been signed because the students are unhappy. Several hundred students have signed and the unity is astounding and the fervour of revolution is in the air.
Only problem is- it's against the guards!
A college education, high school, primary school, tuitions, story books, internet, note books, movies, television and every other form of awareness at all our disposals-
And we shoot the messenger!
For fuck's sake.
I feel particularly Indian lately.
Monday, July 14, 2008
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