To cope with rising expenditure on salaries and infrastructure, the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are planning to increase fees by Rs 1-2 lakh for their two-year post graduate programmes (PGPs).
IIM-Bangalore's Board of Governors, chaired by Mukesh Ambani, today decided to increase the fees from Rs 11.5 lakh to Rs 13 lakh for the incoming batch of 2010.
A couple of days earlier, IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) said it would hike the fees for its two-year PGP course.
EVERY RUPEE COUNTS Following are the changes in fee structure for the 2-year post graduate programme | ||
Institute | Current fee | Fee hike |
IIM Ahmedabad | Rs 12.5 lakh | Rs 1 lakh (expected but not confirmed) |
IIM Bangalore | Rs 11.50 lakh | Rs 1.5 lakh (confirmed) |
IIM Calcutta | Rs 9.00 lakh | Will take a decision on April 3 |
IIM Lucknow | Rs 8.00 lakh | Not to raise fees |
IIM Kozhikode | Rs 9.00 lakh | Rs 1 lakh (confirmed) |
IIM Indore | Rs 9.20 lakh | Undecided |
IIM Shillong | Rs 1.9 lakh | Will hike to over Rs 3.5 lakh (Board to meet on April 3, yet to decide on quantum) |
IIM-Kozhikode (IIM-K), too, decided to hike its PGP fee by Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh from the next academic year. Debashish Chatterjee, director of IIM-K, told Business Standard: “The board has decided to increase the fee by Rs 1 lakh for PGP students from 2011 academic year. Currently, our fee is Rs 9 lakh for two years.”
Likewise, IIM Calcutta is exploring an increase in fee once again this year. Dinesh Verma, chief administrative officer of IIM Calcutta, said: “We will have a board meeting on April 3, where we will decide on whether or not to hike fees once again.”
IIM-Shillong, too, is expected to raise its fees to over Rs 3.5 lakh from the current Rs 1.9 lakh. However, the board will meet on April 3 to decide the exact quantum.
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IIM Lucknow, though, will not raise its fees immediately.
Devi Singh, director, IIM Lucknow, said, “We increased our fee to Rs 8 lakh last year for the two-year PGP programme, from Rs 6 lakh earlier. We are not looking at any immediate increase in fee right now.” IIM-Indore and IIM-Bangalore could not be reached for comment.
IIM-A, on its part, is yet to figure out the exact amount of increase, but sources close to the development said the increase will take into account the inflationary trend, and may be around Rs 1 lakh for the two-year course. This will take IIM-A’s total fee to Rs 13.5 lakh. An IIM-A spokesperson did not wish to comment on the quantum of the fee hike.
The sharpest fee increase by IIM-A was in 2008, with PGP students of its 2008-10 batch shelling out Rs 11.5 lakh for the two-year course. The institute effected another hike in 2009, taking the total fee for the course to Rs 12.5 lakh.
Last year, IIM Calcutta too nearly doubled its fee for the two-year post-graduate programme (PGP) to Rs 9 lakh from Rs 5 lakh. Till 2008, the two-year PGP students at IIM-C paid Rs 5 lakh (Rs 3 lakh for first year and Rs 2 lakh for second year).
The fee hike, reason the IIMs, is aimed at recovering the deficit incurred per student per annum, salary hikes for faculty in keeping with recent pay revisions, and the need to combat rising costs to attract quality faculty, students and researchers to the institute. Moreover, implementation of the 27 per cent other backward classes (OBC) quota (which demands infrastructure expansion) and additional classrooms and hostels to accommodate more students, are other reasons for increasing the fee.
IIMs have implemented the scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST) and other backward caste (OBC) quota and increased the student intake by 50 per cent over the last three years.
Verma of IIM Calcutta had told Business Standard, “Expenditure has increased drastically. Although in 2008 we had decided against hiking PGP course fee even as all other IIMs did, we think we have to increase the course fee now because of the Rs 200 crore we are investing in redoing our campus, revised salaries for faculty in sync with the pay revisions. Also attracting quality researchers to the institute is now more expensive than what it used to be earlier. Also, the fee hike is aimed at recovering a deficit of around Rs 1.5 lakh incurred per student per annum.”
When all IIMs increased fee in 2008, IIM Calcutta was the only IIM to actually ‘hold back’ its earlier decision to hike PGP course fee. In 2008, IIM Ahmedabad increased its two-year course fee from Rs 4.5 lakh to Rs 11.5 lakh, IIM Bangalore increased from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, IIM Lucknow hiked its fee from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, IIM Kozhikode increased from Rs 3.85 lakh to Rs 6 lakh, and IIM Indore increased from Rs 3.80 lakh to Rs 6.10 lakh.
Meanwhile, IIM-B’s intake for the incoming batch will be 375 students which will go up to 420 next year. The current batch size is 350. When asked if faculty members were likely to get a salary hike at a time when foreign universities could come in, Pankaj Chandra, director of IIM-B said, “We won’t lose any faculty. We are doing many things. Compensation is a part of it.”