The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have
raised their tuition fee to Rs 90,000 a year
from this academic year, up from last year’s Rs
50,000. According to the IITs, even after the
increase effected after four years, the fees
cover just over a fourth (26.5 per cent) of the
actual expenditure on students.
That is because IITs spend Rs 3.4 lakh on a
student in a year. “Though we spend more on
students than we charge them in terms of fee,
we also have a responsibility as public
institutions. We cannot expect student fees to
take care of the entire expenses — capital plus
operating costs,” said Devang Khakhar,
director, IIT-Bombay .
The fees for about 22 per cent of students
from the SC/ST category are fully waived. Also,
up to 25 per cent of the students, whose
parental annual income is less than Rs 4.5
lakh, are entitled to a fee-waiver. The
remaining students pay the full fee.
Currently, tuition fees finance only seven-10
per cent of the total recurrent expenditures of
the IITs. Also, no fees are charged for SC/ST
students and for OBC students with an income
test. Most post-graduate and PhD students get
scholarships and reimbursement of their
tuition fees.
IITs meet 80 per cent of their expenses —
salaries and staff cost which are fixed —
through financial grants from the ministry of
human resource development (MHRD).
Given that IITs are government institutions and
have made engineering education accessible to
the middle class, the cost needs to be shared
by state as well as society, says an IIT Kanpur
professor.
"For IITs to be financially independent, a
bouquet of financial instruments needs to be
put in place. The industry, which recruits
students from us and our alumni group need
to understand what IITs do for them,” the
professor added.
A recent note on IIT-Bombay's finances
prepared by IIT-Bombay Heritage Foundation
says the current system of charging fees needs
to be reformed.
"Currently, IIT-Bombay collects tuition fees
net of exemptions, which results in very low
contributions to internal revenues. To mobilise
increased resources from fees, a structural
reform of the fees/exemption system is
needed,” says the note. It adds that under this
system, all students would pay the fees to IIT-
Bombay and if the government policy is to
subsidise targeted groups, then these groups
should compensated by a cash transfer
mechanism. Such a system would considerably
reduce IIT-Bombay’s dependence on the
government. Increasing fees under the present
system will not.
“In general, the IIT fee system is complicated
with a number of exemptions, reimbursements
and concessional fees for specific target
groups. As a result of these exemptions, in
FY12, the average net collection per
undergraduate student is only 50 per cent of
the average fee of 50,000 per annum. In short,
if the present system of fees and exemption is
continued, future increases in fees will not
yield resources to cover the expected
increasing share of the operating costs," the
note says.
In contrast, the top 20 private engineering
institutes in the country charge anywhere
between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh per student
per annum. Keeping inflation into account,
these institutes increase the tuition fee every
few years.
IIT-Bombay's yearly expenditure is Rs 250
crore. The institute receives around Rs 200
crore in grants from MHRD and the rest is
generated by tuition fee and other
miscellaneous charges from students. Salary
and staff cost, including electricity and sundry
bills, goes up by around 10 per cent each year
at IIT-Bombay.
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).
IIT-Guwahati, on the other hand, has an
annual expenditure of Rs 110 crore, and nearly
15 per cent of this — Rs 15-16 crore — comes
from fees. Gautam Barua, director of IIT-
Guwahati, had earlier said with the increase, it
would now contribute about 17 per cent.
IIT-Delhi’s annual expenditure is around Rs
170 crore. Eight to 10 per cent of it comes
from fees and the rest through grants from
MHRD.
When the IITs began operations, they charged
an annual fee of Rs 500 for their flagship
undergraduate engineering programme.
The IITs have revised their fee only twice in the
past — in 1998 and 2008.
In 2008, IITs had doubled the fee for
undergraduate courses from Rs 25,000 to Rs
50,000 a year.
HELPING HAND
* Fees for about 22 per cent of students from
the SC/ST category are fully waived
* Up to 25 per cent of the students whose
parental annual income is less than Rs 4.5 lakh
are entitled to a fee-waiver
* No fees are charged for SC/ST students and
for non-creamy layer OBC students. Most
post-graduate and PhD students get
scholarships and their tuition fees are
reimbursed
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