VAT on private educational institutions
The private universities are charging exorbitant fees (tuition, etc.) from the students as they do not get subsidy from the government like the public educational institutions. The media reported recently that groups of private university students are set to meet the Honourable President and Chancellor of Pvt Universities Advocate Abdul Hamid and submit a memorandum demanding withdrawal of Value Added Tax on the private educational institutions. In Bangladesh, the private sector has been supplementing the government efforts in education sector from the pre-liberation time.
Students from middle-income families have no alternative but to study for a livelihood. They enroll themselves in the private universities, medical colleges and engineering colleges failing to get admitted into the public institutions owing to limited seats. The students of private institutions are confronting severe hardship to pay the exorbitant fees and other expenditures on education. In these backdrops, the government should come forward to share some portion of the financial load of the guardians. The present and previous Chancellors were also urged in several occasions to reduce tuition and other fees of the private universities aiming to give a relief to the financial burden of the guardians of the students studying therein. In fact, no private university has reduced fees yet.
The government also did not come forward to reduce the financial burden of the private university students. On the other hand, government is paying almost 100 per cent cost of education of the students studying in the public universities. On the contrary, in the budget 2015-16, Value Added Tax (VAT) at 7.5 per cent has been imposed on the tuition and other fees on the private universities, medical colleges and engineering colleges. At the first reading, it may seem that the proposed VAT has been levied on the pvt universities but in the ultimate run both incidence and impact of imposition of such tax would fall on the unfortunate students studying therein because the institutions would just pass on the burden to the students by increasing the fees further. Maybe, they even make a little profit out of it.
The students in public universities and medical colleges pay tuition and other fees, which are less than 1/20th of private universities, medical colleges and engineering colleges.
We would like to urge the government to withdraw the imposed VAT on tuition and other charges on private university and colleges which are, in fact, realized from students. It should also consider of paying subsidy to the private universities so that they can reduce tuition fees of the students.
Md. Tahmid Ashraf
Student, East West University,
Dhaka.
