IITs likely to hike student fees

As part of the efforts to confer self-financing status to IITs, drastic revisions in its present fee structure seem likely. The IIT directors have decided to propose an eight-fold increase in its student fees before Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal.

The brain storming session would also discuss the newly evolved system for checking the ongoing teacher shortage crisis, under which fresh M. Tech graduates would be allowed to serve as ‘faculty interns’ in IITs.
The IITs plan to raise the annual fee of Rs 50,000 that is presently collected from the students to Rs 4 lakh. The institutes also want the proposed fee hike to be spread over a period of 10 years with a mark-up of Rs 35,000 each year.  

Governmental assistance in providing a specific corpus to each IIT to pay off pension dues and separate funding to IITs for research work are the other suggestions that would be raised by the IIT directors during the course of the meeting. 

The meeting has been convened by Sibal as a follow-up to an IIT council session that was held on October 19, 2009. It was in this council session that the different IITs were assigned with the task of preparing a reform blueprint on specific issues.

The eight fold fee increase is the solution that IIT Kanpur has evolved as an after effect of being asked at this session to come up with a financial structure proposal that would help in providing economic autonomy to the institutes.

IIT Kanpur has found out that the institutes spend an average of Rs 4 lakh on a student annually. Collecting the required amount from the students as fees remains to be the lone option left before the institutes if they want to gain financial independence from the government.

It was IIT Delhi, which has been entrusted with the task of solving the faculty shortage problem that came out with the innovative ‘Catch them young’ program. The M. Tech graduates at IITs who join, as ‘faculty interns’ would be given the charge of only two to three classes a week. They would be free to be engaged in their PhD work for the rest of the time.

Such faculty interns would not only be freed from administrative chores but also would be paid better than those who pursue their PhD alone.

However, IIT Madras, which was asked to look into administrative reforms, has simply echoed the minister’s plans that were announced after the October council meeting. However, a preliminary screening has been recommended to curb the number of applicants from over 4 lakh to around 1.2 lakh per year. The question on how to increase the weightage of school-leaving marks in IIT admissions remains unsolved.

However, IITs are not willing to make use of the All India Engineering Entrance Examination result as a scale for short-listing its students.

According to IIT Bombay, which has been asked to suggest on enhancing the research output, it is advisable to form a separate funding category dedicated exclusively for research purposes.