Amid a dwindling corpus and lack of proper financial support, board members of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) are set to meet on Saturday at the campus to discuss fee, among other things. The board, according to sources, may see hike in fee this year.
“The board meeting will take place on Saturday. It is very likely that the board may hike the fee this year as well,” said a source close to the development.
In spite of effecting a fee hike by 200 per cent, IIM-A is now running at a deficit of Rs 7-8 crore, against a corpus of Rs 170 crore in 2001. The institute had asked for a fund of Rs 54 crore from the government of which only Rs 2 crore has been disbursed so far. Last year, IIM-A hiked fee for its flagship post graduate programme (PGP) course by 200 per cent from Rs 5.5 lakh to Rs 11 lakh.
Due to a graded fee structure, close to 80 per cent students benefited through fee waivers, while the institute paid 30 per cent from its own coffers.
Several fee waivers led to students paying an average fee of Rs 3.98 lakh per annum. Add to that, IIM-A will also bear an additional burden of Rs 7-8 crore since it has to pay retirement benefits and arrears from 2006.