Kerala HC: Private medical colleges collecting fees in advance considered ‘profiteering’
The case arose from a challenge to demand notices issued to students for demand of annual fees from medical students under circumstances where the fee demanded pertains to an academic year different from the academic year in respect of which instructions are being imparted to the students.
As a result of the lock down imposed by the State Government in the wake of the global COVID pandemic, there was an unavoidable interruption to the course of study and hence, while the months in the calendar year passed by, there was no simultaneous progress in the instruction months that constituted the academic year.
The High Court held that-
It would be wholly inequitable and unjust to permit the educational institutions concerned in these writ petitions to collect the determined annual fees in respect of any academic year save that for which instructions are currently being imparted.
When the fee permitted to be collected is an annual fee for rendering educational services, the collection of any fee that does not relate to the academic year for which the educational service is rendered but for a future period, would militate against the very concept of a fee for it would be a payment for services yet to be rendered. The educational institutions would then be resorting to ‘profiteering’
