The Union HRD minister has urged the IITs to wait till the ministry puts in place a finance corporation to help students get loans
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are mulling a Rs 35,000 rise in student fees for the next 10 years. This would effectively increase the fees from the current Rs 50,000 a year to Rs 400,000 a year by the end of 10 years.
The plan is aimed at helping the IITs become self-financing institutions. However, IITs maintain that an increase is not possible without the government’s permission. “We have taken up the issue with Union Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal who has asked us to wait till the ministry puts in place a finance corporation that would help students get loans,” says B K Mathur, Dean — planning and coordination, IIT Kharagpur, adding: “A fee hike is necessary but there should be more scope for education loans to students, to discourage dependence on parents’ salaries.”
Currently, IITs spend Rs 400,000 per student annually. To be financially independent, IITs need to earn this amount through student fees. At present, they charge Rs 50,000 a year. The areas of income for an IIT include a government grant (which takes care of 25-35 per cent of an IIT’s expenditure), student fees and sponsored research.
M Thenmozhi, faculty at IIT Madras and president of All India IIT Faculty Federation, concurs that “with an increase in costs, it is important to increase student fees. Engineering studies in India should be subsidised, but we are looking at maybe a Rs 30,000-35,000 increase in the annual student fee immediately.” Government funds make up for around 25 per cent of IIT Madras’s expenditure.
Bhartendu Seth, President, IIT Bombay Faculty Association, is thinking on similar lines. “We are making significant investments into areas like bio-sciences and engineering. A lot of cost escalation over the years need to be taken care of. But engineering studies in India should always be subsidised, like it is world over. Perhaps grants from the government could be increased,” he says.
Seth notes that most investments made by IITs need to be recovered. Management institutions, on the other hand, do not require as much funds as IITs because they do not need heavy equipment or high-end laboratories. “Premium management institutions charge huge fee because of the kind of placements and salaries they offer to students passing out from these institutions,” adds Seth.
IIT Bombay, which was recently asked by Sibal to suggest reforms to improve the research output of IITs, has suggested that the government create a separate funding category for research.
At present, research funding is a part of the total money an institute receives from the government. Separating the research funds will ensure a dedicated budget for research, according to IIT Bombay.
M Balakrishnan, Dean of post graduate studies, IIT Delhi, maintains that “we need more resources, like investments in research, laboratories, equipment, consumables. We are also proposing that salaries for post-doctoral fellows should be increased. All this would lead to a hike in student fees.”
Balakrishnan notes that IIT Delhi gets many PhD students but hardly post-doctoral fellows. “Now that faculty salaries have been increased, salaries for post-doctoral fellows should also improve,” he adds.
“Salaries and stipends are so poor that most students do not wish to take up doctoral programmes and eventually join the faculty. Stipends for doctoral students should be at least Rs 30,000-40,000 per month, instead of 17,000-25,000 right now, in order to encourage them to join the profession,” adds Thenmozhi.
