BENGALURU: Tuition fees of all IITs were “woefully low” and “covered only 12-15 percent of the operating budget”, B Muthuraman, Indian Institute of Technology Madras alumnus and Padma Bushan awardee said here on Saturday, at the launch of the IIT director’s forum.IITs cannot become world class institutes if they do not get more funding to improve infrastructure, hostel, faculty salaries, research, sports and ambience, he said.
“The current budget per IIT is Rs 700 to Rs 800 crore in the older IITs. If this is the kind of budget we have, we cannot do anything. It is not right to expect the government to give all the funding. They should fund the infrastructure facilities but not operating budget. This needs to come from the tuition fees,” he said, adding,” The government has cut funding for IITs but also does not allow them to hike fees.”
He said Stanford University has an annual budget of Rs 50,000 crore while Chinese universities have Rs 25,000 crore. They are only partially funded by their respective governments, operation costs are met by student fees - 50 per cent at Stanford and 35 per cent in China.Mohan Reddy, chairman of the board of governors at IIT Hyderabad said, “We discussed that 1/3 rd of the funding should come from tuition fees and 1/3rd from endowment funds.”