Hike the fee

You can change the incumbent, but you cannot find a human resource development minister without the zeal to control. And clearly nothing enrages an HRD chief as much as an educational institution that acts to enhance its reputation for excellence. Therefore, where Murli Manohar Joshi once walked, so does Arjun Singh now. His officials have asked the chairman of the governing council of the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) to account for its act of “unwarranted tripling” of fee — from Rs 4 lakh for the two-year management course to Rs 11.5 lakh. It is a chilling reminder of Joshi’s attempts four years ago to slash the Rs 1.5 lakh annual fee then to Rs 30,000. For the ministry there are two issues here. One, to show commitment to equity in higher education. Two, to keep the network of institutions very much in its control.

The IIMs — the rest too have increased their fee by varying amounts — argue that the costs of upgrading and even maintaining standards demand a higher fee. The institutes, like many other centres of learning, are finding it particularly difficult to attract and keep good faculty on the pay-scales mandated by the University Grants Commission. Budget surpluses would give them — world-class by any standard — ways to compensate professors. And if this raises costs, one is certainly entitled to ask, will this put the IIMs beyond the reach of a vast majority? An answer to this has been factored into the revised fee structure. For a student to be eligible for financial assistance at IIM-A, for instance, the income limit for his family has been raised from Rs 2 lakh annually to Rs 6 lakh. Why should the state subsidise richer students, especially for a programme that assures them the highest starting salaries in the market?

Why else than to maintain control over the fringes of excellence in the knowledge sector. Regulation in higher education has become such an obvious euphemism for control that the IIMs’ struggle for autonomy is better understood by the experience of Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business. Also ranked among the premier management schools in the world, the ISB has made a virtue of not gaining the approval of the All India Council for Technical Education, a statutory body to regulate such instruction. The ISB has the advantage of corporate financing and support by premier business schools like Wharton. The IIMs need the activist support of the corporate sector, which benefits by the alumni’s skills.