By Sumaiya Arafaat for TwoCircles.net,
After NIT’s it’s bad news for IIT students. The panel, headed by IIT Roorkee Chairman Ashok Misra has approved a proposal for a three-fold increase in the tuition fees for the IITs nationwide.
So from the present Rs 90,000 the tution fee will now amount to Rs 3 lakh per annum and $4,000 to $10,000 for foreign Students from the next academic session. Further, the Standing Committee of IIT Council (SCIC) has also accepted new screening system incorporating aptitude test in entrance examination process 2017 onwards.
However, the final decision rests with the Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, who chairs the IIT Council, the highest decision-making body of all the 16 IITs.
Last time the IITs had raised the tuition fee was in 2013. The SC and ST students, who comprise 20% of the total strength, as well as those belonging to economically weaker sections with a family income of less than Rs 4.5 lakh per annum, need to pay only 10 per cent of the fee.
The steep hike is based on a new model where the entire running costs would be borne by the IITs, thus reducing its dependence on the government funding. The latter will only pay for capital assets such as labs and support infrastructure creation.
A committee headed by scientist Anil Kakodkar had in 2011 pegged the operational costs of IIT per student between Rs 2.25-3 lakh. It had suggested that IITs recover their operational costs entirely from the tuition fee.
An IIT spends Rs 2.5 to 3 lakh every year on a student who only pays the institute Rs 90,000.
On the other hand, an IIT graduate on an average gets a pay package of Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, which in exceptional cases goes into crores!!
The Rationale behind fee hike
The argument behind the hike is that the government should only take care of planned expenditure on labs, equipment, library and the running cost of staff salary however the housekeeping, water and electricity etc should be borne by the students themselves.
The HRD Ministry remains tight-lipped as the Minister has to take into consideration the various aspects before approving the fee hike. Of particular concern will be the fallout in the poll-bound states!!
The committee has also recommended that every student be provided educational loans at an interest-free basis to cushion the steep hike.
In April 2011, the committee headed by Anil Kakodkar and appointed by the MHRD to recommend autonomy measures to facilitate IITs scaling greater heights, proposed among other measures, a tuition fee hike for the IITs from the existing Rs 50,000 per annum to Rs 2.5 lakhs per annum for undergraduate students. The proposal was met with stiff resistance and the then HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, decided against implementing it.
Two years later, in early 2013, the new HRD Minister, M M Pallam Raju accepted the IIT Council’s recommendation but for a smaller tuition fee hike, from Rs 50 000 to Rs 90 000 per annum for the 2013 batch of B. Tech. students. These fees were fixed centrally, and hence applied uniformly to all IITs. In addition, the fee for MS/PhD students was also increased from around Rs 4000 to Rs 8000 per semester.
The hike is ostensibly aimed at helping the IITs reduce their currently heavy dependence on the government for financial aid.
The goal behind the hike is to balance out the proportionality between the cost of providing the services and the fee charged and that IITs should become financially sustainable like the IIMs and that a fee hike is the only way to ensure that.
The students though, feel that the government views education as a commodity and is trying to privatise education. The government is slowly withdrawing from the sectors like healthcare and education which have been public goods for over centuries. Privatising healthcare and education has had disastrous consequences in other countries.
But Seriously How Much Is Enough?
If there is inflation in the cost of every other aspect of life, it is reasoned, then why not bring educational cost at par with that?
With service tax to food commodities to nearly everything seems to be on hike then the government must have thought why leave the education!!
The reaction from parents has also been in a similar vein as the students. A fee hike will only lead to a greater burden on the students especially those who purposely target such government aided institutes and cannot afford the education in private. Remember Raju and Brijesh from the Anand Kumar’s Super30 batch 2015, sons of a poor daily wager who were position holders in JEE but did not have Rs. 1 lakh registration fee. Celebrity Aamir Khan first came forward to help them but later the ministry waived the fee. These are only a few cases who come into the limelight but there are still many who qualify the entrance but cannot afford it!!
Well the committee has promised ‘soft loans’ as a solution to all such students who cannot pay the fees upfront. But this issue also has had a polarising effect – some, primarily parents and students, feel that this will add an unnecessary burden to a student’s future prospects, while others argue that an undergraduate IITian, who on an average will earn Rs 8 lakh per annum, can easily afford to pay back such loan later. While some say that a soft loan will not only help an undergraduate pay his fees on his own terms, but will also inspire him to study even better so that he can pay back the loan at the earliest by getting a good job and make him responsible.
This argument however holds void for students intending to pursue higher education. Now how can a student on a stipend pay back such large sums?!! The method of financing higher education with bank loans would only be deleterious to research in the long run as it would become impossible for an undergraduate to repay the loan if he takes up post-graduate education in continuity.
But there are interesting solutions to this dilemma. In the United Kingdom, you need not start repayments of your loan until your income reaches a certain threshold, which is £ 21 000 per year currently. Also, the repayments after reaching this threshold are calculated according to your level of income. This ensures a great amount of flexibility. Similarly, in the United States, a part of your loan, can be waived if you take up specific professions, for example teaching, nursing or enter public service sector.
Additionally,
It can be like, after graduating from an IIT one would have to work with a government set up for example ISRO, BSNL, IRCTC etc for a bonded period of time just like the private companies sign bonds with their employees after training them. And if one does not want to work in the government sector then he/she can pay themselves out. This is not a new idea as the same is followed in our National Defence Academy (NDA) where after training the soldier for 4 years, he is made to sign a bond of 20 years with the Indian National Army. This would also justify the tax payers on whose money these educational institutions are funded by the government and prevent the issue of instant brain drain from the country. But again the feasibility of all these ideas with India’s current infrastructure is highly debatable.
Well from the very beginning, since the inception of the Kakodkar Committee, the aim was set at improving the quality of education at the IIT at a global level however there seems to be no convincing argument to support the fact that the fee hike will definitely lead to that!
Although a section feels that IITians must recognise the value of what they are receiving in the institute and pay their dues responsibly, some feel that this hike is a step towards today’s ultimate evil – privatisation. Still another section views it as a bitter pill that must be accompanied with multiple concurrent therapies for the “Acche Din” promised by the government. The issue that lies buried inside everyone’s mind, though, is the same – whether our education system can really be lifted up at par with the best global universities which was the inspiration all along. Only the method and the executive’s commitment towards that method remains at question here.
(The author has done B.Tech from Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology and has worked with TCS. She writes for www.theinfopedia.com in Education niche and current issues)