And
now, about a month ago, the HRD Cabinet Minister strongly
criticized the IIMs for 'keeping their tuition fees too
high.' Despite wide-spread opposition from the IIM functionaries,
the Ministry wants bring down the tuition fee from the current
1.5 - 2 lakh rupees per year to about 20,000 rupees or even
less (based on a suggestion made by the UR Rao Committee
for Revitalizing Technical Education), linked to the average
per capita income of Indians. The move is apparently towards
making higher education more accessible and affordable to
deserving candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. The
intent is admirable but there is a problem with the implementation.
Following this line of thinking, in order to maximize the
number of incoming poor students, the tuition fees must
correspondingly be kept as low as possible. Such an across-the-board
subsidization of highly specialized post-graduate programmes
at the IIMs is simply unnecessary and quite untenable.
There
is a better, more sustainable alternative: we can increase
the number of sponsored scholarships, tuition waivers and
low-interest loans so that poor candidates need not forgo
a chance to study at the IIMs. Even now, most IIM students
do not come from rich families - they finance their education
though some student assistance schemes (low-interest bank
loans, typically). Given the excellent job placement record
of IIM graduates, repayment of these loans has never been
a problem to all parties concerned. Instead of the government
money (i.e. your and my hard-earned money) paying for all
students, we need to build upon and improve the system of
easy financing for eligible candidates. In this respect,
India's post-independent political economy has taught us
a valuable lesson: there is no need to subsidize every student
only to subsidize some deserving poor.
This
controversy should help focus our attention on three more
substantial issues:
First,
there are scores of universities and public institutions,
other than the IIMs, that offer management degrees. Most
of them exist as mere factories producing graduates on a
mass-scale. Consequently, their management graduates do
not meet even the minimum of international standards. Instead
of trying to increase political control over the functioning
of the IIMs, our government should invest their precious
resources on bring these 'lesser' institutions up to the
par.
Second,
India's public spending on education is already too little
- only 3.2 percent of the GDP. Given the depressingly low
literacy rate among Indians, the government should try to
bring this figure closer to around 5 percent. On top of
that, recent reports indicated that the HRD Ministry requested
for an outlay of 32,000 crore rupees in the 2004 budget,
while the Union Government would have allotted only around
17,000 crore rupees. In this light, the Ministry might probably
do greater service by focusing their precious resources
and efforts on primary and secondary education.
And
the third: fathering the IIMs has been a proud achievement
of the Indian Government. Since their birth, these institutes
have grown and matured into some of the finest business
and management education centers in the world. All this
has been made possible thanks to the benign support and
encouragement from successive Indian governments. Now, these
fine, young centers of excellence do not need more aggressive
'parenting.' Guidance should not turn into interference.
Why?
Sometimes,
the children know better!
***
