Petition to reconsider the College fees during the pandemic

This petition concerns the letter written to SIT administration. If you agree with the letter, please sign it (the letter is attached here and we encourage you to go through it again)

Subject – Problems with the annual college fees 

We hope this letter finds you well. This letter represents the problems of all the students of all the branches of Siddaganga Institute of Technology about the proposed fee structure. We would like to highlight a few problems that most of our students are facing:

1.       The college starts on 1st of September 2020 which is a month late than the usual schedule. That too, we have online classes which would mean that we cannot avail college facilities such as laboratories, libraries, wi-fi, washrooms etc.

2.       Although the college claims to open by 1st of October 2020, and we really hope that it does, the current situation of the pandemic makes it less likely that we’ll be able to achieve that goal. However, on the off chance that the college still manages to open by the stipulated date, we will have no problem paying the entire fees. In this case, we just request you to give us a little time till October and monitor the situation.

3.       Paying the entire fees right now, without knowing for how long we will have to continue online mode of education without any practical environment such as laboratories and classes, seems unreasonable to a lot of parents.

4.       It is very difficult for many families to arrange the fees on such a short notice and this has created panic among the students, considering a lot of families are facing financial crises due to the pandemic situation.

5.       Many students hail from remote areas (including Kashmir, where 4G internet has not been deployed yet) and internet facilities is a luxury for them. Hence, attending online classes becomes very difficult for them. Also, neither students nor teachers are comfortable in online mode and the methodology of teaching changes drastically. This makes the quality of online classes sub-standard in comparison with offline classes.

There are many more problems that cannot be discussed in this letter. We are not asking you to completely waive-off the college fees, as we understand that the teachers and other staff members are also facing the same problems.

We request you to find a middle ground that favours both, the management and the students. The students from all the branches have reached on a consensus about the following requests:

1.       If we are successful in starting offline classes from 1st of October 2020, we will pay the entire fees. But we request the college administration to wait and monitor the situation and then ask for fee submission.

1.       In case, the college doesn’t open by 1st of October 2020, we request that the college gives appropriate concessions in fees with the understanding that online classes and learning experience are not as good as their offline counterparts.

2.       Most importantly, paying the entire fee on such a short notice is extremely difficult for a lot of families. Hence, we request you to allow students to pay their fees in two shifts, one before the commencement of online classes and the other before the confirmed commencement of offline classes (the point of concession in fees, shall we fail to commence offline classes on time, should also be taken into consideration if this suggestion is to be considered).

We hope, that in tough times like this, the administration will understand our problems and we can assure you that if there are things that we need to understand about the management, we are ready to listen. We emphasize on reaching a middle ground that favours all the parties involved, rather than just one section being happy and other sections having to take the burden of the entire situation.

We will be highly obliged for your consideration. We look forward to hearing from you. Please find attached, the petition signed by more than a thousand students of our college.

Yours faithfully,

Students of all branches,

Siddaganga Institute of Technology

SIT Student    Contact the author of the petition