Hello.

Self-supporting courses are courses started by colleges without financial assistance from the government in any form. Which means, all the expenses of the course including tuition fees, laboratory maintenance, salary for teachers are to be covered by the tuition fees from the students.

In regular or aided courses, part of the expense is covered by financial assistance from government in form of grants and also by UGC (University Grants commission). So the only difference between the two courses is the variation in fee structure.

Before joining a self-supporting course, you should consider the following problems

1. The fees is usually about 3x times when considering the regular courses, even in government engineering colleges like Anna University.
2. Some banks create a fuss with the self supporting thing and they usually make you run between colleges and banks to get the educational loan. I applied for loan and tried to get loan for about 14 months before i dropped the idea (literally tired). But according to the rules, being Self Supporting doesn’t make you ineligible for educational loans.
3. Most important of all, major scholarships (government) and allowances are not allowed for Self Supporting courses. In the eligibility clause, they add the line “Only regular courses are eligible”

These are the major disadvantages in choosing a self-supporting course. But other than that, there is no difference between the regular and self-supporting courses in terms of syllabus, certification and placements. So self-supporting courses are good to go if you are not worried about the expenses part.

Hope this is helpful.

Good luck.