Let’s be honest — when you hear the name Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University, you probably imagine a place built to give underprivileged students a fighting chance. A place where a kid from a modest family could walk in, learn a skill, and walk out with a future. That was the dream when DSEU was founded in 2020 by the Delhi government.
So, it hits differently when that same university turns around and says: “Pay up — or we’ll erase your name from our records.”
What’s Actually Happening?
DSEU has rolled out a strict new policy — if a student hasn’t paid their fees for more than two months, they will be struck off the rolls. Not suspended. Not warned. Struck off. That means their enrolment is gone. Their academic journey at the university? Over.
And this isn’t coming out of nowhere. The university had already been stopping fee defaulters from sitting in exams and even attending classes. The strike-off rule is just the next, harsher step in a pattern that’s been building for a while.
The Fee Hike That Started It All
Here’s where things get incredibly hard to wrap your head around.
For the 2024–25 academic session, DSEU hiked its fees by up to nine times across most of its 80 courses. Not nine percent. Nine times. The kind of jump that doesn’t just stretch a family’s budget — it obliterates it.
And if that wasn’t enough, the university also quietly took away a 20% fee concession that SC and ST students used to get, and a 10% waiver that EWS (Economically Weaker Section) students were entitled to. Gone. Just like that.
So, the students who were already the most financially vulnerable — the ones these concessions were literally designed to protect — suddenly found themselves staring at bills they had absolutely no way of paying.
What the Administration Says
The Vice-Chancellor, Ashok Kumar Nagawat, has been surprisingly candid about why all of this is happening. His argument, in plain terms: the university is running out of money.
He says DSEU needs to bring its fee structure in line with other skill-based institutions so it can improve its facilities. And on the question of concessions for SC, ST, and EWS students — he’s essentially asked: if we give discounts to some students, who pays for it? Should that burden fall on general category students?
It’s a financial argument. And from a purely numbers-based view, you can see the logic. But logic doesn’t pay rent. It doesn’t feed a family. And it certainly doesn’t explain to a disabled mother why her child can no longer attend university.
The Human Cost Nobody Wants to Talk About
This is the part that matters most, and it’s the part that tends to get buried under administrative language.
Picture a student — an SC student — whose father is too old to work, whose mother is physically disabled, and whose sibling is also studying. There is no earning member in that household. This student applied for an education loan, hoping it would buy them some time. But with the strike-off policy now looming, they’re genuinely afraid they’ll have to drop out before the loan even comes through.
Or consider another student who was barred from appearing in their end-term exam simply because their fees were unpaid. Their family scrambled, borrowed money from wherever they could, managed to pay — and then immediately received a demand for ₹28,500 more for the next semester. The relief lasted about 48 hours.
These aren’t edge cases. When the university released its list of “fee defaulters” in June, it ran into the hundreds. That list was distributed through WhatsApp groups by campus directors, accompanied by a formal message from the Assistant Registrar: these students are not allowed in exams, and they are not allowed in class.
The only small mercy? Students who could prove they had an education loan in process were allowed to sit for exams — provided they submitted the paperwork. For everyone else, the door was closed.
The Cruel Irony of It All
Here’s what makes this story genuinely painful: DSEU was built for these students.
It was conceived as a university that would make quality, skill-based education accessible to Delhi’s working-class families. The kind of institution where a first-generation college student could go and not have to worry about whether their family could afford it.
And now, in the name of financial sustainability, it is pricing out the very people it was created to serve. A student movement — Aawaz — has been raising its voice against these changes, but the administration has so far shown no signs of backing down.
The money problem is real. Nobody’s denying that universities need funds to function. But when the solution to a funding crisis is to hike fees by nine times and strip protections from the most vulnerable students — one has to ask: who exactly is this university still for?
Because right now, it doesn’t look much like it’s for the students whose names are being quietly struck off a list.
