IBNLive Chat: IITs, IIMs should help needy students

DOORS BEING SHUT? After the IIMs hiking tuition fees, IITs, too, are planning to hike their fees.

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Chat Now: with ex-IIT(M) director on proposed fee hike

Will the proposed fee hike bring education at par with world standards?

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• Chat Now: with ex-IIT(M) director on proposed fee hike

Keywords: IBNlive chat, IIT

After the IIMs hiking tuition fees, IITs, too, are planning to double their fees. Is the proposed fee hike justified? Will it lead to better quality of education, at par with world standards? Or will it make higher education unaffordable for many? Former IIT-Madras director Prof P V Indiresan answered these and many other questions.

Raghav: Is the fee hike the reason because only few IITs are there in India? The government should think of adding more IITs since the talent pool is increasing.

PV Indiresan: Talent pool is increasing but the demand for R&D - where IITs ought to be supplying - is not there. Frankly, I suspect that most people want the IIT brand and not the IIT education. That is why old colleges are being renamed as IITs.

Ashutosh Kumar Singh: Sir are there similar plans to pump in more money into R&D? The grant, which M. Tech students get are very nominal. Won't it be good for a country like ours to pump in more money in R&D sector?

PV Indiresan: R&D definitely needs more money but it needs industrial demand even more. Only when industry poses real life problems will R&D flower. That is not happening because most Indian industries buy technology; they do not innovate. Our problem is less with money than with demand from industry

Nandan Dasgupta: Sir, is it not possible for all professional colleges including medical colleges to follow the Singapore pattern - say, make the fees for MBBS in Lady Hardinge to Rs 5 lakh a year, but give a 99 per cent grant subject to signing a three-year bond for working at a post designated by the government. I'm sure refinement suitable to Indian conditions and for IITs and IIMs can be worked out. That way, the rich can pay and go off abroad or take cushy jobs but the less financially able but capable students need not be deprived of an education. Also, the system becomes self sustaining. I'm sure this must have been considered by the authorities at some stage. If so, do you know what happened?

PV Indiresan: Ideally, fees should be low the way they are in Europe. However, that is possible only when there is no proliferation of colleges. If the government had learnt to "cut its coat according to cloth" and kept student enrollment within the limits it could subsidise this problem would not have arisen. The issue is: do we want more and bigger IITs or low fees?

IK: Do you have plans to increase your students strength or having a different big campus for IIT-M ?

PV Indiresan: The government has announced several new IITs; IIT Madras will be involved in the Hyderabad one.

Bharathiraja: Dear sir, applying for IIT entrance and admission itself is very costly so how come a poor boy can get into IIT? Is IIT/IIMS only for upper middle class?

PV Indiresan: You have raised an important issue. IITs should change their admission system so that students need not go to expensive coaching institutions. That happens in many other countries. We need to consider how admissions are managed without the intervention of coaching institutions in other countries.