A student making it to the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) may soon have to pay far higher fees than his predecessors. But there is good news for IIT and IIM-aspirants: the annual intake in the institutes is likely to be doubled, particularly in high demand areas like software engineering.
In a paper prepared by the Planning Commission based on the promises made in the BJP-led government's National Agenda for Governance, it has been suggested that the existing tuition fees and development charges would have to be suitably restructured to meet gaps in education infrastructure.
The paper makes a politically sensitive suggestion that the government should give up its constitutional obligation to provide free and compulsory education upto Class VIII.
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The paper seeks to operationalise the Prime Minister's Special Action Plan on education, and has been submitted to the Union ministry for human resource development for further action.
Noting that the IITs and other reputed institutions like the IIMs have enjoyed autonomy, flexibility and responsive governance, the paper however says that there is an "urgent need" to enhance their output and quality. A major boost in improving the quality of Regional Engineering Colleges is also envisaged by integrating them into the academic and faculty improvement programmes of the IITs. The paper suggests three principal modes of resource mobilisation:
* Fee restructuring: Based on the criteria of Unit Cost and the socio-economic background of the student;
* Public funding: Widening the public funding resource-base by attracting contributions from various departments of the government and the community, in order to support basic infrastructure such as laboratories, libraries and new courses; and,
* Industrial funding: Encouraging contributions from industrial establishments for sponsored research projects.