IIM-L to charge Rs 130,000 as fees

Toeing the line of other IIMs, Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow on Wednesday decided to charge Rs 130,000 per annum as tuition this year and announced a fee waiver to students whose family income is below Rs 200,000 a year.

This was announced by IIM-L chairman Hari Shankar Singhania after a board meeting held in New Delhi to take a decision on the drastic fee cut announced by former HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi from Rs 150,000 to Rs 30,000.

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"We have decided that the fee structure will remain the same as last year's, i.e. Rs 130,000 per annum," Singhania said after the meeting, which was attended among others by additional secretary in the HRD Ministry Sudip Banerjee.

He said that IIM-L had always remained in the forefront in fulfilling its social obligations and "no one will be denied higher education because of lack of finance".

Singhania said the students whose family income is below Rs 200,000 would be given 100 per cent waiver on tuition fees.

IIM-L is the fifth such institution to retain the old fees rejecting Joshi's controversial fee reduction in the prestigious B-schools.  IIM Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Bangalore and Indore had already announced their decision to charge the old fees.

Singhania said that IIM-L accounted for nearly 50 per cent of the total scholarships given by all the IIMs in the country.

He said IIM-L also remained in the forefront in arranging loans to needy students and 70 per cent of the students in the institute at present availed the facility from leading banks and financial institutions at low interest rates.

He said while in the first year the institute would not insist on merit to give scholarship to the needy students, in the second year, the students would have to prove their merit to continue to get it.

Asked as to how the institute would fund the scholarships, he said the government assured to extend financial help as the institute's corpus was only to the tune of Rs 8.5 crore (Rs 85 million).

Observing that IIM-L was one of the "fastest growing" institutes, Singhania said the intake of students was likely to go upto 600 in the next three years.

Singhania said the Institute had already got land in Noida to start a satellite centre for various programmes. This would include three-year part time Post Graduate diploma courses, Global Post graduate diploma, regular PGD and national faculty development programmes.

Elaborating on the Global PG course, Devi Singh, director of IIM-L said under Executive MBA programme, students would study for sometime in the country and outside the country for the remaining period.