IIMs consulted on fees: Joshi

Former Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Murli Manohar Joshi lashed out against new incumbent Arjun Singh's decision to revert the IIM fee cut decision.

Joshi was irked over Singh's statement that his decision was an arbitrary one. "It has been stated by the human resource development minister that the IIMs had not been consulted by the ministry before taking the decision on a fee cut," said Joshi. "This is totally against the facts," he said.

Joshi went on to give specific dates on which he met with IIM directors, and the fee cut decision had been in accordance with the New Education Policy, 1986.

he said in the meeting of the IIM directors held on June 19, 2000, the issue concerning the fee structure at the IIMs and other management schools in general was on agenda for discussions.

The issue of rationalising the fee structure in IIMs was discussed again on January 23, 2002, then on April 16, 2003 and October 30, 2003, with all the directors by the education secretary and other ministry officials

"I had called a meeting of all the directors in the last week of January, where the issue of fee cut and other related issues were discussed. A decision to rationalise the fee structure was taken after considering all the facts," he said.

Joshi said consultation did not mean concurrence but if the IIMs failed to rationalise the fee structure despite repeated requests of the government and keep on charging astronomically high fees from the students "the government could not have remained a silent spectator".

"All state funded PGDBMMBA courses have a fee structure that ranges between Rs 20,000 and 30,000," he said. He also added that self-financing business management institutions, which did not receive any support, also charged around the same.

The IIMs, he said, had also turned "profitable", while receiving central grants.

"The older IIMs -- at Ahmedabad, Calcutta and Bangalore -- have been generating huge profits and therefore the fee cut will no longer hurt them," he said.

"In fact, the IIMs need only Rs 5 crore of non-Plan support to cover costs, but when the Shunglu committee looked at their finances it discovered the IIMs had been inflating costs and under-reporting profits for years," he said.

He added that the new government's decision was clearly violative of the Supreme Court's orders in the TMA Pai foundation case, where it was stated that there could be no profiteering from education.