IITs may increase fee nearly 3 times

Proposal to hike fee for all courses

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) may almost triple the tuition fee for their bachelors programme from Rs 90,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh a year. The IIT council has proposed the fee hike. This may be the steepest hike proposed in the history of the institutes. A committee headed by Anil Kakodar had in 2011 proposed a hike of Rs 2-2.5 lakh per student.

There is a proposal to revise the tuition fee for post graduate programmes as well to Rs 2.5 lakh. Most post graduate students receive scholarships and a reimbursement of their fees. "The agenda mentions a facility to provide interest-free loans will be worked out to facilitate the fee increase," said the director of an IIT who did not wish to be named.

If approved by the council, the new fees will narrow the gap between what the IITs charge and spend per student. The IITs now spend Rs 3.5 lakh a year on every student. Tuition fees cover just over a fourth of the expenditure.

"We have a responsibility as public institutions. We cannot expect student fees to take care of the entire expense," Devang Khakhar, director of IIT Bombay had earlier told Business Standard.

Resources available to IIT Bombay, about, $14,000 per student, are much lower than those available to US universities and even Asian universities. Sponsored projects at IIT Bombay provide 24 per cent of its total revenue. For most global peers, this is in the range of 60-80 per cent.

The IITs waive 90 per cent of the tuition fee for about 22 per cent of students from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The remaining 10 per cent includes examination fees and other miscellaneous charges. Also, 90 per cent of the fee is waived for another 25 per cent of students whose parents' annual income is less than Rs 4.5 lakh. The remaining 53 per cent students pay their full tuition fees.

The IITs meet 80 per cent of their expenses through financial grants from the Union human resource development ministry.

National institutes of technology last week decided to increase their tuition fee to Rs 2 lakh per annum, up from the present Rs 70,000 per annum.