Fees for the Entire Professional Course Must Be Fixed Before Admission: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has ruled that tuition fees for a professional course must be determined for its entire duration before students take admission. A change during the course is permissible only in exceptional and unforeseen circumstances.

Background

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• Students joined the B.Tech programme of the 2023 to 2027 batch at Dr. B.C. Roy Engineering College, Durgapur, in September 2023.
• On 16.10.2023, after admissions had closed, West Bengal raised the annual tuition fee ceiling for self financing professional colleges to ₹1,10,000.
• On 15.12.2023 the college revised its fees from the second semester. Semester tuition rose from ₹44,000 to ₹60,500 for some branches and from ₹40,000 to ₹55,000 for others, and a development fee was added.
• A single judge of the Calcutta High Court dismissed the students’ petitions on 15.01.2026. A division bench reversed that on 23.03.2026 and held that the revised fees applied only to students admitted on or after 16.10.2023.

What the Supreme Court held

• The fee for the full course must be fixed and notified before admission, so that every student knows the total financial commitment at the start.
• The High Court’s protection for already admitted students was upheld.
• The Supreme Court did not accept the High Court’s reasoning based on retrospectivity, equity and estoppel from the admission brochure. It rested the protection on the need for certainty about fee liability.
• Fee fixation committees must work as continuing bodies and recommend fees well before admissions begin. 
• A narrow mechanism for genuinely unforeseen cost increases may exist, but only as an exception.

What this means for institutions:
Institutions should confirm the approved fee for the full course before the admission process opens, and state it in the prospectus. A clause that fees may change with government decisions is unlikely to justify a mid course hike for students already admitted.