The Supreme Court of India has held that fees for professional courses should ordinarily be determined and notified before admissions begin, ensuring students and their families know the financial commitment they are undertaking. The Court ruled that changes to fees during an ongoing course should be permitted only in exceptional circumstances, such as an unforeseen increase in expenditure.
A Bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe delivered the judgment on October 14, 2026, while deciding appeals concerning a fee hike imposed on engineering students in West Bengal. The Court upheld the Calcutta High Court's directions protecting students admitted before the revised fee notification, although it disagreed with parts of the High Court's reasoning.
Background
The dispute arose after students joined the 2023–2027 B.Tech programme at Dr. B.C. Roy Engineering College, a self-financing institution affiliated with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology.
When admissions were completed in September 2023, the college had an existing fee structure. On October 16, 2023, the West Bengal Government issued a notification revising the upper fee limit for private self-financing professional colleges. The college subsequently introduced higher tuition fees and a development fee from the second semester, resulting in an overall increase of approximately 37.5%.
Students challenged the increase before the Calcutta High Court. Its Division Bench held that the revised fee structure could apply to students admitted on or after October 16, 2023, but not to those whose admissions had already been completed. It also directed the refund or adjustment of additional amounts collected from the earlier batch. The college and other institutions challenged that decision before the Supreme Court.
The Court emphasised that fee fixation requires balancing three interests: students' need for financial certainty, educational institutions' need for adequate resources, and the public interest in effective regulation. It observed that regulatory committees must complete their work efficiently rather than leave institutions and students facing uncertainty after admissions.
The judgment stated:
“A student entering a four-or five-year professional programme should ordinarily know, at the very threshold, the financial liability that they or their family is undertaking.”
The Bench noted that the previous fee revision in West Bengal had taken place in the 2016–17 academic year, while the revised notification came only in October 2023. It observed that the delay could have been avoided if the authorities had completed the revision process before the 2023–24 academic session began.
The Court also clarified that institutions must be allowed to recover legitimate educational costs, including expenditure on infrastructure, faculty remuneration and student services. However, fee revisions must follow the prescribed regulatory process.
It further observed:
“Variation in the fee payable during the subsistence of the course is permissible only in exceptional instances such as unforeseen increase in the expenditure.”
The Supreme Court partly allowed the appeals while affirming the Calcutta High Court's operative directions on the applicability of the revised fees. Students whose admissions were completed before October 16, 2023, remain protected from the revised fee structure, and the college must comply with the High Court's directions concerning refunds or adjustments.
The Court also directed that fee-fixation committees must function efficiently and that High Courts should exercise judicial review to ensure their effectiveness, expertise and integrity.
It set aside the High Court's reasoning insofar as it treated the notification as retrospectively applicable and relied on equity and estoppel against the college based on its admission brochure.
