The Hindu : New Delhi News : Centre reserves decision on IIM fees

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 10, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Centre reserves decision on IIM fees

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JUNE 9. The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has reserved its decision on the fee structure at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) till after the Board of Governors of the six institutions take a final view on the issue over the coming fortnight.

While a rollback of the fee reduction order of the Government is not being ruled out, there is also talk of a ``zero tuition fee'' situation to ensure that meritorious students have access to IIM education.

Though the directors of the six IIMs apprised the Secretary of Ministry's Department of Higher Education, S. C. Tripathi, of their efforts to evolve a uniform fee structure today, the Ministry officials remained tight-lipped, maintaining that a view would be taken after the Board takes a decision and inform the Government by June 25. The IIM directors — who were closeted with the Secretary for well over an hour — also refused to divulge details of what transpired.

Under consideration is a graded fee structure to make IIM education accessible to all, but there will be no fixed quota to accommodate students from the lower income groups. Also, there are plans to increase student intake over the coming years. As for Government funding — particularly to IIM Lucknow, Kozhikode and Indore that do not have the kind of corpuses that IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta have — there is likely to be greater monitoring.

At today's meeting, the Shunglu Committee recommendations also came up for discussion and there were indications that the directors were open to incorporating some of the suggestions.

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