The Hindu : IIM-K to cut fees

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 28, 2004

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National

IIM-K to cut fees

By Our Staff Reporter

KOZHIKODE, MARCH 27. The chairman of the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIM-K), A.C. Muthiah, said today that a meeting of the board of governors of the IIM-K had decided to make a cut in the annual fees in line with the directives of the Ministry of Human Resource Department.

(It may be recalled that the Ministry had directed all the IIMs to cut their annual fees from Rs. 1.5 lakhs to Rs. 30,000. IIM Lucknow and IIM Indore have already endorsed the fee cut.)

The decision of the board of governors, which met here on Friday, will in effect reduce its annual fees of nearly Rs. 1.05 lakhs — lesser than some other IIMs — to Rs. 30,000.

Dr. Muthiah said that the decision of the board was "unanimous.'' The fee cut in no way affected the autonomy of the IIM-K. "There is no curb on our autonomy. We are a young institute. We do not have a huge corpus (of funds).''

It was the prerogative of the Government whether or not to go in for the fee cut. The Government should frame a policy on whether or not to continue with the subsidy, he said. "The appointment of director and creation of posts in the IIMs are done by the Government.'' He also said that the subject was not sub judice as none of the IIMs had gone to court.

He said that the Government had spent Rs. 60 crores to Rs. 70 crores in the last few years for just 120 students of the IIM-K. "Our budget is approved by them. We have already worked out our losses on the account of the fee cut.'' He also said that the IIM-K would also recruit more faculty to fill the vacancies.

On the efforts of the IIM-K for more funds, he said that the institute got a small fund from e-learning. ``We also are going to increase the student strength. But first of all, we have to expand our infrastructure before going for mobilising funds.''

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