Fee Hike at IIT

Let’s be clear and honest to ourselves. Any thing that fails to change its philosophy with time, disappears soon. That holds pretty true for any educational institute also. Any organisation should be ready to accept change and should change accordingly.

There was an article by Atanu Dey stating - "The full cost of a decent 4-year technical education today is around Rs 20 lakhs (or around US$ 45,000.) That’s a conservative estimate. So in today’s nominal rupees, the full cost of educating 300,000 engineers is Rs 6,000,000 lakhs (or US$ 13.5 billion.) The IITs do charge some fees but those fees have been a small fraction of the true cost of education. It is reasonable to peg the total subsidy to be of the order of the estimated Rs 6 million lakhs. The objective of this exercise is to get a feel for the total transfer of resources from the general public to reasonably well-to-do upper segment of society.

That subsidy is a pure transfer or a grant, not a loan. The beneficiary is not required to return, either directly or indirectly, the money spent. There’s only an expectation that the return will be indirect. Moreover, not everyone has an equal chance of getting the subsidy. To get into an IIT, you have to have an excellent school education, for otherwise you fail in the intense competition for admission. Therefore you must be from a family with means much above average. Therefore the subsidy is targeted at the already fortunate. ."

And the content of the article was on the fringes of mine memories. It was rejunevated when IITs plan to increase their fees in coming years. Every person who has benefited from the subsidy given by government has the moral duty to pay back to the society. We have no rights to take benefits of subsidy or reservations if we are unable to pay back. IITs are going to increase their fees from Rs 50,000 per year as fee. Currently, it is on hold but I think it will be implemented soon. The proposal suggested increasing the fee to Rs 4 lakh per annum over a period of 10 years. This is done to remove the dependence of premier institutes on government for funding and becoming more autonomous.

I think that Atanu dey has got the point when he take his stand : On IITs, PanIIT, and the Funding of 50 New IITs .

My Opinion: My seniors inspired through their actions me that the students of ITBHU had an obligation to serve the institute & country, and I knew that I must one day use my education to serve India and my college. I don't have idea over the stance of IT-BHU administration and transition of college in to IIT status is still in pending state. There is no such debate in my college that how much a college should depend on government for monetary help ? The contribution has been fine from alumni but not even worth comparable to IITs. Their is vision missing in the administration about the future of ITBHU, not the vision documents (2006). I think its not the case of missing spirit of contribution, but the proper process and vision plan.

English and ITBHU

The campus is completely alien to the freshers both in terms of the place and its people. All freshers can experience a very different and real world and hence have the opportunity to learn about everything once again from its beginning in its true nature.

The first and foremost problem faced by students is to get the grasp the good English needed for communication and writing skills. 3 out of 60 people have given JEE in Hindi but almost the majority used to struggle to cope with the professional use of language. General exceptions are always there (Varun Murali, Kapil & Kunal in my batch) who helped the rest a lot in their pursuit of improvement. I observed that the ones who did cope happened to come from ICSE or CBSE schools whereas students with the state board school background had to push lot harder than their fellow batch mates. Most of the students coming from state board schools are worst affected as boards provide specialist in field (PCM) but the versatility was lacking. Here in the college, the reading is not taken for the pleasure or learning new language but for acquiring the crux of GD and interviews with minimum work on grammar.

We started regular newspaper reading in the first year of college, out of compulsion to improve my English and vocabulary. It was more of a burden rather a hobby or interest for anybody. Few took the flight to financial times for the sake of improving his understanding of finance. TOI is suggested for primary level of & The Hindu for the next level. My interest in sports particularly cricket given a good reason to go through the each word printed in the sports section of the paper, but the road to editorial column remains at-least 1 year ahead in TOI section. We are enamored by news column writing and develop their views as our own for GD sessions.

The magazines and novels are the next target of masses for continual improvement program. Outlook, India Today and a hell lot of Business magazines are circulated in the whole college. Novels are highly popular with Dan Brown & Chetan Bhagat as the popular authors. This is the first time when most of students read for pleasure of it.

With the internet sources are considered new information and the books as old information, Library is not used by students despite of few brave reforms by IT administration. The Curriculum for learning English is most frustrating part in the academic help for raising the threshold level of English in the campus. The Professional Communication course is taught in the 1st semester and then there is sudden gap of six semesters for next course. Seminar and Group Discussion came in the 8th semester when people had already got the job and enthusiasm for learning has been at minimum level. This curriculum completely baffles me as the major problems faced by students are inability to express themselves in writing, public speaking and even listening to prolonged lectures.

Don't get me started over the language programme offered for learning 'English' by University. It was good for other foreign languages but the experience of my friends in their futile attempt to learn English from academia is horrible. One good thing is that event like JAM in college has really helped lot of people.

I will just say that we should encourage reading and application learning to our friends & juniors. We have to make them understand why reading the prescribed course isn't enough, why did they have to read 10 other books, blogs and several reading materials to make an informed opinion. The more we grow in the life, the bonding with technology is lessened and networking with the people increases.

*I may be seeing only minor part of a process, but readers will give their discrete view on this topic.

Vichaar Shoonya + 5

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. [Part of Speech by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.]

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