Our Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) don't deserve the financial situation they have been going through.
For churning out one of the best brains (and millionaires in many cases) in the country, if nothing else, IITs should have, in all their years of existence, been financially self sufficient.
But in many cases, it is a situation where they are woefully short of funds even to meet their day-to-day needs in running of the institute.
What makes things worse for them is their dependence on the government for grants which has made successive governments consider them their property---tinkering with the very basic fabric of the institute; introducing quota, regulating fee and many other such measures that have further drained the IITs, financially.
Consider this: In over 60 years of existence, most of the older IITs still do not have funds to allocate for basic repair and maintenance of their buildings.
What is more appalling is that the otherwise vociferous alumni group of the IITs is hardly in picture when it comes to donating to their alma mater.
As the director of an IIT puts it: "Giving back to one's alma mater is not a culture in India. So we cannot go begging to our students. Besides, most students emulate their seniors who have not encouraged the culture of giving."
According to a back-of-the envelope calculation, an IIT professor says, for all the education subsidised for IITians, the alumni owe them a whopping Rs 3,000 crore. And the companies, which come in droves to recruit students, would easily owe the IITs around Rs 500 crore, had the IITs been charging placement fee.
With Rs 3,500 crore in its kitty, imagine how well an IIT could have used the money to hire international faculty, keep its buildings in prime condition and pump in more in research among others.
Successive committees on revamping of IITs and their financial condition have suggested ways and means to do so, but to no avail.
IIT directors argue that they cannot get out of the government's purview as the kind of financial resources they need to operate (IIT Bombay's annual expenditure for 2012 was Rs 702 crore), can be made available only by the government. Of the total resources available for the day-to-day running of the institute, 88 per cent come in the form of government grants.
The total resources available from all sources to IIT-Bombay, about $14,000 (about Rs 8.4 lakh) per student, are much lower than resources available to US universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology (about $250,000 or Rs 1.5 crore), and even for Asian universities such as the National University of Singapore, about $40,000 (about Rs 24 lakh).
IITs argue that they have made engineering education accessible to the middle class. But with the practice of most Indian institutes depending on fee as one of their primary source of cash inflow, why not make people, who can afford to, pay the full fee?
Notably, majority of these engineers go ahead and join the Indian Institutes of Management or other B-schools paying a good Rs 15-18 lakh plus for the two year management course.
The problem is IITs may continue their financial struggle for years to come. As the way things are, no government is interested in helping them better their condition and alumni groups will fight for everything else but help their alma mater be financially independent.
