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Elite Technology Institutes in India
Double Their Tuition
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW DELHI
Issue
cover-dated May 16, 2008
NEW DELHI -- Faced with an increasing
financial deficit, India's seven elite, government-subsidized
Indian Institutes of Technology are set to nearly double tuitions
in June, in what will be only the third fee increase since the
institutes were set up in the 1950s.
The country's other public universities
may also increase tuition for both undergraduate and graduate
programs. India's higher-education regulator recently set up
committees to determine the ideal tuition structure. And the
National Knowledge Commission, an advisory body to the government,
has recommended increasing tuition substantially to cover more
operating costs.
Higher education in India is heavily
subsidized, and admission to the undergraduate engineering program
at the Indian Institutes of Technology is highly coveted. The
institutes are considered among the best engineering schools
in the world, and many of their alumni are in top positions
in multinational corporations. In April a record 320,000 applicants
took the entrance exam for fewer than 7,000 seats.
A four-year undergraduate engineering
degree at the technology institutes will now cost $5,000. That
is up from $2,700, said Prawal Sinha, dean of students' affairs
at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. The institutes
last raised tuition in 1998.
"The ministry wants all Indian
Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management
to be self sufficient, so we had to increase our source of income,"
said Mr. Sinha, adding that students already enrolled in the
bachelor's program won't be affected by the tuition hike. "We
have still maintained our standards without hiking fees all
these years because we feel we are responsible to society."
Local news reports said the Indian
Institutes of Technology have complained to the government that
they were not given enough money in the budget for 2008-9. Instead,
they said, a huge share of the funds has been diverted to the
three new institutes scheduled to open this year. Some of the
seven existing institutes said they did not have enough money
to pay salaries and had also received notices from municipal
agencies and electricity-supply companies for failing to settle
their bills.
In early April, the six premier Indian
Institutes of Management also said they would raise tuition
in June, with one of the institutes, in Ahmedabad, tripling
tuition for its two-year program, to nearly $29,000. The five
other management institutes also announced hikes of between
25 percent and 75 percent. The institutes' officials say the
tuition increases are necessary to combat faculty shortages
and to retain valuable human resources that are being lured
away by the private sector.
India's minister in charge of higher
education called the Ahmedabad institute's steep hike "unwarranted"
and said it would lead to poorer students being denied access
to the two-year graduate management program.
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