‘Adjusting charges to stay alive and grow’: IIT Bombay defends fee hike, explains structure

NEW DELHI: A day after the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay students went on hunger strike against the fee hike decision, the institute came to defense of the fee hike and refused claims of using force on students or involvement of police in the issue. In an official statement, IIT Bombay said, “an institute continues to adjust its charges accordingly to stay alive and grow, to serve the students of today and tomorrow equally well.”

“Police were present as a routine security measure due to the reunion convocation of earlier batches which involved around 2200 graduated students visiting campus, but had absolutely no interaction with the protesting students,” said IIT Bombay in its statement.

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Explaining the fee hike, IIT Bombay said that the bulk of its funding comes from the government, with fees being only 8% of its revenue. “While tuition fees can never cover our overall costs, it is the expectation that the hostel related fees will at least be comparable to the hostel related expenses incurred,” it said defending the hike in hostel fees. IIT Bombay said that the operational expenses are more than the hostel fees it was collecting earlier, and even with the increased fees, they are still more than the fees collected. And this is not even counting the capital cost of construction of hostels, it said.

The institute informed that the total amount that students pay for hostel stay was around Rs 2000 per month earlier, which is increased now to around Rs 2700 per month. This amount includes room rent, electricity and water charges as well as medical fees. It asked to compare the fees with the PhD stipend of between Rs 31,000 to 34,000 per month, and the MTech stipend of Rs 12,400 per month.

IIT Bombay fee structure

IIT Bombay also informed that the tuition fees for current PhD students is Rs 2,500 per semester, and Rs 5,000 per semester for new students, while for new MTech students, it increased from Rs 5,000 per semester (after partial tuition fee waiver) to Rs 30,000 per semester. “It may be seen that even these increased fees (which do not impact current students) are very nominal,” the institute added.

The institute went on to explain the hostel fee structure in detail and said that the higher educational institutes now need to take a loan to pay the cost of all new hostel and academic building construction, which is to be repaid in 10 installments, with interest paid by the Ministry of Education. IIT Bombay said that it needs to build more hostels and academic buildings due to sharp increase in the number of students. “The hostel fee increase is essential to cover actual expenses, allowing our other sources of income to be used to provide better academic facilities for all our students, and to take the loans which we badly require for expanding our infrastructure, rather than subsidizing operational expenses of hostels.”

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Further, IIT Bombay mentioned about the steps taken by the administration to address the concerns of students following the open house such as adding four student members in fee committee, reducing the Hostel Amenities Fund amount from the Semester Mess Advance, arranging deferral of fees for economically challenged students, introducing scholarships for UG, PG students etc.

“It may also be mentioned that service to students comes first to IIT Bombay and during the onset of the pandemic, with support from our alumni, every needy student was provided financial support for a laptop and data connection. IIT Bombay will continue to attend to the needs of the economically disadvantaged group of students,” IIT Bombay further said.