IIM-A students chide tuition fee cut move

While the Union ministry of human resource development (HRD) is working on a plan to reduce the tuition fee at the Indian Institute of Managements (IIM), students at the institute here ridicule such a move.

Some of them also expressed apprehension that a cut in fee may affect IIMs' reputation.

According to students at IIM-Ahmedabad, though the government expects IIMs to compete with the Havard Business School whose corpus fund is $1 billion, it is trying to reduce the corpus fund of IIMs from Rs 100 crore to Rs 20 crore.

"The fee structure at IIMs should be fixed in proportion to the starting salary of a student of the institute. A Harvard Business School student receive an average salary offer of $50,000, while the fee charged there is around $1 lakh. In India the average starting salary of an IIM student is Rs 7 lakh, while the fee charged is only Rs 1.5 lakh," said a student of a post-graduate programme (PGP) at IIM-A. At the Havard Business School, the ratio between the average salary offered and the fee is 2:1, while the ratio here is 7:1.5, which is much higher.

"As a matter of policy, IIMs do not deny admission to any of the students who has cleared the entry procedure for lack of money. In many cases the institute has helped students to get educational loans or provided scholarships. Students at IIMs do not feel that the fees are high. In fact, we are provided more than what we pay here," said Raghav Mittal, 2nd year PGP student, IIM-A.

"Most of the banks are eager to provide educational loans to IIM students because they know that a student here can repay the loan within the first year of his placement. If the government is going to cut the fee, it is going to affect the infrastructure of the institution and not going to help students in any way," Mittal added.

While Kunal Singh, 2nd year PGP student, IIM-A, said, "I do not agree with the government's decision to reduce fees at IIMs. In fact, the fee structure at the institute should be increased because of the infrastructure it provides."

"If the government plans to reduce the fee to Rs 20,000, it is going to affect the institute drastically. In case of such a move, IIMs will become just like any other government-run college. It is unrealistic as Rs 20,000 is not enough to meet even our mess bill," Singh added.

Prateek Mehta, 2nd year, PGP student, IIM-A, said, "The rationale given by the government for the fee cut is not at all justified. The socio-economic condition of the US is strong as compared to our country. More over our per capita income is far below as compared to the US. The ratio of the fund required to run an institute like IIM and the per capita income does not match any where."

"IIMs should have full autonomy to raise and utilise their funds in their own way, and the government should not have any say in the functioning of IIMs," Mehta added. Prashant Kumar, 1st year PGP student, said "There is no problem with the fees charged at IIMs. Its very reasonable as compared to the facilities provided to us. Moreover, nationalised banks provide educational loans without any security.

Most of the banks come to the campus to advertise their loans. That apart, many scholarships are available to take care of the meritorious and financially weak students. The fees at IIMs are well-justified."

"The fee reduction will only help to spoil the academic standard of the institute, which has been built over decades by the students. In a country where less than 50 per cent of the people receive primary education, it does not make any sense to subsidise management programmes at such distinguished institutions," said Vijaysimha Reddy, another 1st year PGP student.