Subsidies for MBA: IIM fees cut 80%

Joshi said there was no question of taking away the autonomy of IIMs and rejected that cut in fees were prompted by electoral considerations.

‘‘These institutions have been made by us and we manage only them. There is no question of snatching their autonomy,’’ Joshi told Aaj Tak tonight.

He said there was no connection between fees and the quality of education provided by the institutes: ‘‘Had it been so, if I were to hike fees by four times, would the quality also go up four times?’’ Officially, the IIMs would not react. Joshi had got the chairman of IIM Ahmedabad, N R Narayanamurthy, to agree to his move.

But IIM professors pointed out that this was ‘‘an eyewash’’ because the real challenge before the government was to ensure equal opportunities at the primary school level. At the postgraduate level, there was hardly any deserving candidate who was being deprived of the chance to study at the IIMs because of financial constraints, they pointed out.

In the order issued by the ministry today, there was justification that the Supreme Court has spoken out against very high fees in the T M A Pai case. Subsequently, a committee headed by former ISRO chairman Professor U R Rao said that it ‘‘is unjust and even unwise to make technical education unaffordable to capable but poor students.’’ The Rao Committee had suggested that the ‘‘fees should be pegged to 30 per cent of India’s per capita income of Rs 6,000 per year.

The order today said that ‘‘no other fees should be levied from the students in addition to the prescribed fees except for mess charges that would be payable by the students separately. The revised fee structure will take effect from the academic session 2004-05.’’

Joshi, of course, is not going to deprive the IIMs of funds. Former Comptroller and Auditor General V K Shunglu, who is already looking into the CAT exam leak, has been asked to assess if any of the IIMs would face any financial difficulty. It is unlikely that the three older and more established IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata would face any problem. It remains to be seen if the fee structure would make the going tough for the IIMs at Lucknow, Indore and Kozhikode.

The IIM managements have enjoyed a free hand since the days of the Narasimha Rao government when they were asked largely to fend for themselves. Even the United Front government, which viewed the fee structure suspiciously, had not interfered. The IIMs, especially the three premier ones, had been able to make net gains through consultancy jobs, which was almost twice the amount they earned by way of fees.