Govt okay with 100 pc fee hike in IITs

The increase in fee has been recommended to cope with the rising cost of education and running the institutes, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 26, 2008, 24:52:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A fee hike in the IITs appear to be on the cards with the HRD Ministry reportedly agreeing to double it from the next academic year as per the recommendations of the Standing Committee of IIT Council, government sources told HT.

The formal announcement would be made after a meeting of the IIT Council, headed by HRD minister Arjun Singh with all IIT directors as members. The meeting is expected to take place in May after the budget session.

Ministry officials said the announcement has been delayed because of public outcry over exponential fee hike by IIMs in March and April.

The Standing Committee of the IIT Council has recommended that fees for the popular B.Tech course should be increased from Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 per annum.

For the M.Tech course, the committee headed by scientist C.N.R. Rao had recommended that annual fees be increased to Rs 50,000 from Rs 25,000 but the students who are not sponsored should get a fee waiver of Rs 20,000.

The committee had said a hike was necessary for IITs to cope with the rising cost of education and running the institutes, a view also held by the ministry. Per student cost of education in an IIT is estimated to be Rs 2 lakh.

“Even after the fee increase the government will have to bear majority of the burden for providing them education,” said a government functionary.

Moreover, the IITs’ financial deficit is increasing despite special financial package in the form of block grants. “Fee hike is necessary to fill this gap,” the committee said.

The Union Cabinet had recently approved block grants for seven IITs and IISc, Bangalore. The ministry will release Rs 72.5 crore in the current financial year, while another Rs 73 crore has been released in the last financial year.

Unlike IIMs, who have been increasing fees at regular intervals, the last fee revision in the IITs was in 1998. Since the cost of education in IITs on account of infrastructure and faculty has increased, the ministry has agreed for the fee hike.

Every year about two lakh students appear for the Joint Extrance Examination for admission to 4,800 seats.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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