The April 8 decision of the union ministry for human resource development (HRD) to raise annual tuition fees for higher secondary school-leavers entering the country’s 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) from the current Rs.90,000 to Rs.200,000 in the new academic year starting July, has evoked mixed reactions within students, parents, academics and industry leaders countrywide. Expectedly, while the student community has strongly opposed the steep 121 percent increase in tuition fees, informed academics and industry representatives believe that the fees hike was long overdue.

Although the IIT Council comprising representatives of 16 of 23 IITs and chaired by Union HRD minister Smriti Irani, initially approved the new tuition fee for all students with effect from the next academic year, protests from students at IIT-Kharagpur prompted the ministry to hastily issue a clarification that the new tuition fees will be applicable only to new batches of students entering the IITs. Moreover, the ministry’s clarification stated that students from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, differently-abled and from households with annual income of less than Rs.100,000 will get full tuition fee waiver. Students from households with annual incomes of less than Rs.500,000 will be entitled to a two-thirds tuition waiver while all others will be provided interest-free loans to fund their education.

These generous concessions amounting to an almost total volte-face have failed to impress the 9,000 students of IIT-Madras (ranked first among engineering colleges in the India Rankings 2016 under the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the HRD ministry) who have launched a signature campaign against the tuition fee increase, and submitted a petition to the ministry demanding its revocation in toto.

The Indian school education system doesn’t provide science stream students with sufficient economics and social sciences education to enable them to see the bigger picture. Yet, the plain truth is that higher education in post-independence India — mainly availed by the middle and elite classes — has been over-subsidised at the cost of early childhood and primary education.

In the 2016-17 Union budget, of the grudging outlay of Rs.72,934 crore for education, Rs.28,000 crore has been provided for higher education. Shockingly, students in India’s 389 public universities are universally — instead of targetedly — subsidised by way of rock-bottom tuition fees. In the circumstances, the selective targeted subsidisation of SC, ST and low income household students in the IITs proposed by the HRD ministry — although not fully means-tested — is a novel initiative and an example worth emulating in all public institutions of higher education. Moreover, it’s pertinent to note that the new annual Rs.200,000 tuition-cum-residential accommodation fee covers only one-third of the Central government’s actual expenditure estimated at Rs. 600,000 per year per IIT student.

Against this, the average start-up salaries of IIT graduates have always been many multiples of their annual fees. For instance in IIT-M, the average annual remuneration package for 2015 graduates was Rs.6 lakh.

“All students, particularly general category students from middle and elite classes can well afford to pay or repay the new tuition fees fixed by the HRD ministry. With high start-up salaries offered to IIT graduates, they can easily repay student loans over eight-ten years and those interested in research can return after two or three years of work. Greater income flows from tuition fees will enable IIT managements to improve academic infrastructure, hostel and other facilities which are in bad shape,” says Tarun Mishra, an engineering graduate of IIT-M (2013) and currently founder-CEO of Detect Technologies, Chennai.

Clearly, after liberalisation of the economy in 1991 when middle class and professional incomes have soared, and nationalised banks have large education loan portfolios, there is no case for universal subsidisation of IIT students. The HRD ministry’s attempt to restrict subsidies to target students from SC, ST and low-income households is a step in the right direction. But even this regimen needs further refinement to exclude creamy layer SCs and STs. There’s an inherent injustice in IIT students, who inevitably strike it rich when they graduate, being provided almost-free education during their undergrad years.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)