Nudged by the Centre, the IITs could witness a hike in tuition fee for students after a two-year gap.
According to an IIT Director, a crucial meeting of the IIT council in this regard has been called on Tuesday in Mumbai to discuss the modalities and funding pattern including a hike in fee structure to make IITs self-reliant. And also, to “recover” the running expenses of the institutes which include laboratory facilities.
The last time IITs hiked the fee was in January 2013 when it was almost doubled — from Rs50,000 to Rs90,000 annually. The Council of IITs is a Government-nominated body of the 16 IITs vested with all executive powers.
Sources said the meeting could also discuss a proposal to increase the quota of students appearing for JEE Advance in the 2016-2017 academic session from the existing 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh. At present, after the first stage, JEE (Main), 1.5 lakh students are selected for the second stage of the selection process in JEE Advance.
Sources in the HRD Ministry said the IIT council has been advised to deliberate on adopting a funding mechanism where the Government will appreciably enhance investments in capital assets, labs etc but the bulk of the running expenses would be met by the students.
According to sources, this could potentially raise the tuition fee, though the increase would be met by 100 per cent interest free student loan. The model has already been accepted by the NITs. These institute charge Rs70,000 annually and with the implementation of the funding mechanism, the fee could double, said an NIT director.
On the agenda would be increasing the number of students appearing for JEE Advance from 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh from 2016 onwards. “The number of seats available at the IITs has increased considerably as new IITs have also come into existence.
“But, over the past three years, only 1.5 lakh students could make it to the IIT-JEE (advanced) examination. We wanted to ensure that more students could take the competitive examination as seats have remained vacant even this year,” said an IIT Director. IITs, on the other hand, are mulling holding a single entrance test by reverting back to the old format as the existing format is proving to be “cumbersome” and “time consuming”.