It appears that the minister for human resource development Arjun Singh’s commitment to autonomy of institutions like the Indian Institutes of Management finally won the day. This will mean that the nearly 200% fee hike proposed by IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) will go through. Shortly after his meeting with the HRD minister, IIM-A chairman Vijaypat Singhania told reporters that there would be no rollback of the fee and that the minister’s concerns have been addressed. Mr Singh also confirmed the hike and said his concerns for the economically and socially disadvantaged students have been addressed. Concerned that students from economically and socially disadvantaged sections would find it difficult to afford studying at IIM-A, the minister had summoned IIM-A chairman Vijaypat Singhania. In a meeting that lasted well over an hour, Mr Singhania is said to have allayed the minister’s fears and explained the reasons for this hike. Earlier in the day, Mr Singh said that the fee hike was not “unwarranted” and that his chief concern was the ability of children from disadvantaged sections affording an education that costs nearly Rs 12 lakh. Mr Singhania explained that the fee hike was necessitated by the “sharp increase in faculty remuneration following the Sixth Pay Commission” and the fact that IIM-A corpus fund was facing depletion.
The IIM-A board hiked the fees for the two-year management course from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 11.5 lakh. Arguing that IIM-A was not “a temple of learning for profiteering”, Mr Singhania said that annual cost per student was Rs 5.5 lakh, or Rs 11 lakh for the two-year programme. Addressing the minister’s concern about disadvantaged students, Mr Singhania said that the institute proposes to increase the number of scholarships. “ The amount of subsidy we will offer will increase from the current level of Rs 39 lakh to Rs 8.5 crore. Besides this we have hiked the eligibility criteria”, Mr Singhania said. At present, students with a family income of Rs 2 lakh per annum can apply for scholarships. This limit has been raised to Rs 6 lakh per annum. The institute proposes six grades of exemptions. These measures, according to Mr Singhania, will increase the coverage to 62% of the students. Mr Singhania however, failed to explain how the institute would provision for the Rs 8.5 crore for scholarships, especially given the argument that the institute’s corpus was being depleted. The IIM-A chairman said SBI had confirmed that loans would be available to students and that ICICI Bank has been approached for a similar commitment. Further, IIM A will allow students to apply for scholarships as soon as they are eligible for admission. This would mean that students would not have to deposit the entire fee at the time of admission.
Instead they will be required to deposit only the net fee, the amount not covered by the scholarship. However, the cost-per-student estimate is turning out to be a curious point in the entire exercise. A consultant appointed by IIM-A in November last year put the per-student cost at Rs 3.9 lakh but four months down the line, the institute revised the estimate to Rs 5.5 lakh.
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