The tuition fee of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) will be hiked three times, which will be equivalent to the fee structure of the best private engineering colleges. The decision was taken at the National Institute of Technology Council in <g data-gr-id="27">Warrangal</g>.
With this decision, the NITs and the Indian Institutes for Science Education and Research will join the Indian Institutes of Management as publicly funded education institutes that recover their entire running costs from students. According to sources, the revised annual tuition fee for 31 NITs will be over Rs 2 lakh a year from the current Rs 70,000. On the contrary, IITs charge around Rs 90,000 per year from undergraduate students.
Also, the Council has adopted a funding mechanism, under which the Centre will appreciably enhance investments in capital assets, labs, equipment and research, leaving the bulk of running expenses to be recovered through student fee. The increased fee would be met 100 per cent by student – loans at zero per cent rate of interest. This will help in building NITs into robust institutions.
The Council also deliberated on the proposal to have ‘one exam, one rank, one counselling’ for all institutes of national importance, and also on the proposal to do away with 40 per cent <g data-gr-id="21">weightage</g> for Board exam.
Since there are other stakeholders who need to be consulted, it was decided to constitute a core
committee to examine and recommend <g data-gr-id="30">suitable</g> course of action, stated the official release of the HRD Ministry. HRD Minister Smriti Irani said that the performance of institutions would be monitored critically. “The performers will be rewarded while <g data-gr-id="26">non</g>- performers will be evaluated critically,” Irani said.