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Govt revises IIT, IIM faculty pay scales

By Charu Sudan Kasturi
NEW DELHI : Human Resource Development Ministry has revised controversial pay scales for IIT and IIM teachers, increasing salaries for assistant professors but ignoring other key demands and bypassing the Union cabinet that approved the contentious regime.

The revised pay notification, issued by the ministry late September 16 evening, allows assistant professors to leap into a higher pay range after three years, but is silent on other demands made by teachers.

Assistant professors were entitled to a starting salary of Rs 30,000 a month with a rank-based increment of Rs 8,000 a month, under the contentious notification issued on August 18.

Under the revised notification, assistant professors will jump to a starting salary of Rs 37,400 a month with a rank-based increment — called the academic grade pay — of Rs 9,000 a month three years from now.

The revised notification was issued without approaching the cabinet which had earlier approved the contentious pay regime that had triggered unprecedented protests on campuses across the IITs, top government sources told the The Telegraph.

The ministry, sources said, had initially planned to approach the cabinet with the proposed revisions to pay scales, but later concluded that it could make the amendments without approaching the Prime Minister’s council.

The revised notification will, however, increase government expenditure on salaries significantly.

“The revised notification fails to meet most of our demands. We are also surprised that the cabinet has been bypassed,” Dr M. Thenmozhi, IIT Madras management professor and president of the All India IIT Faculty Federation said.

Faculty at each of the IITs will independently hold general body meetings tomorrow to decide on how they will approach the revised notification, Thenmozhi said.

Teachers across the IITs, for the first time in the over 50-year history of these institutions, boycotted classes and held protest marches on their campuses against the contentious August 18 notification.

The IIMs have also joined the IITs in their protest, and submitted memoranda to the ministry.

The IIT and IIM faculty have argued that there is a mismatch between repeated government claims of concern over a crippling faculty shortage at these apex institutions, and the absence of attempts to address this concern.

The new pay regime this year comes 10 years after the salary scales were last revised for IIT and IIM faculty. These institutes have, over the past decade, lost hundreds of faculty to better paying jobs in industry, private engineering and management institutions and foreign universities.

Apart from a pay hike for assistant professors, the IITs and the IIMs are demanding better remuneration for fresh entrants into the teaching profession — to attract young PhD scholars.

They are also demanding that the ministry lift a cap it has placed on the percentage of professors eligible to a higher academic grade pay. The faculty are demanding a performance-related incentive scheme in recognition of their research work. (Courtesy : The Telegraph).

For details go to their respective websites:

IIT, Bombay
IIT, Delhi
IIT, Kanpur
IIT, Kharagpur
IIT, Madras
IIT, Guwahati.
IIT, Roorkee

IITs move to hike fee, adopt IIM fee strategy

NEW DELHI : Taking a cue from the Indian Institutes of Management, the IIT bosses are drawing a cautious plan to gradually equate their fee Anil Kakodkar (right), Chairman of the Board of Governors, IIT Bombay, along with other members of the Board after the IIT Council meeting on the IIT campus in New Delhi on October 19. structure with that of the IIMs.

According to sources the exercise is to make the Indian Institutes Technology self-reliant and to cut dependence on state subsidy, which the IIT dons say, would gradually taper off in the coming years.

A panel set up by the IIT Council — the apex decision making body — headed by atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar has been asked to draft the roadmap for gradual fee hikes, the sources said.

Drafting the fee hike roadmap for the IITs is one of the components of the mandate of the Kakodkar panel set up at the Council meeting on October 19. The Kakodkar panel has been asked to submit its report in six months.

The IIT Council, which met here on October 19, discussed the fee-hike possibility in view of the government starting a loan scheme with subsidised interest rate to help poor students in higher studies, sources said. The Kakodkar panel will also suggest how the IITs should increase the number of scholarships, fellowships and other financial aid to ensure that deserving but economically weak students do not suffer from the hike, sources said.

The new fee-hike strategy aims at following the IIM practice of a gradual but regular fee hike supported by an increase in financial assistance for those students who cannot afford the new fee structure.

“The strategy of gradual fee hikes will allow us, for the first time, an opportunity to hike fees commensurate with rising costs,” an IIT director said.

The IITs had a fixed tuition fee of Rs 25,000 per annum for undergraduate and postgraduate science students for 10 years before the fees were doubled last year — to Rs 50,000 a year. But even with the new fee structure, the IITs earn only Rs 2 lakh for four years of undergraduate teaching, or Rs 1 lakh for two years of the masters in science programme from each student.

The top IIMs — which typically raise their fees each year — in contrast earn around 10 times as much through tuition fees from each student over comparable course lengths.

IIM Ahmedabad, for instance raised the fees for its two-year postgraduate diploma in management to Rs 12.5 lakh this year, from Rs 11.5 lakh last year.

The IIMs in Bangalore and Calcutta charge Rs 9.5 lakh and Rs 9 lakh for their two year postgraduate diploma courses respectively.

The IITs have, over the years, frequently complained about an increasing financial deficit — the gap between funds allocated to them by the government on one hand and their expenditure on the other.

The institutes have met the deficit by dipping into reserve funds drawn from alumni donations and money earned through consultancy projects with industry. But these funds, the IITs have argued, are dwindling.

The IITs argue that their students — like those at the IIMs — earn starting salaries adequate to allow them to pay back any education loan within a few years.

Sibal somersaults, denies statement on IIT-JEE

By Rajiv Shukla
NEW DELHI : On October 20 Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal did a somersault. He denied that he made any commitment on IIT-JEE marks at the IIT Council meet on October 19 and clarified that the HRD minister has no role to play in the IIT admission rules.

Obviously, the somersault was taken by him following volatile reactions from Bihar and other backward states which are ruled by non-Congress parties -- and their tricky chief ministers and politicians are fully capable to make a political capital out of Sibal's statement.

According to the official statement read out to reporters by Kapil Sibal on October 20, any decision on the eligibility criteria to appear in IIT-JEE exam would have to be taken by an IIT committee and the HRD ministry or the government had no jurisdiction over the issue.

"It is the IITs themselves which decide on the eligibility criteria for JEE and the Centre has no role to play," he said.

Mr Sibal's clarification was cleverly drafted and was based on the argument that since neither the HRD Minister nor the ministry has any locus in the IIT-JEE affairs the minister couldn't have possibly made such an irresponsible statement to the press.

“How can I make a proposal on an issue on which I do not have any jurisdiction?” Sibal asked.

However education experts say that since MHRD minister is ex officio chairman of the IIT Council his remarks were perfectly in place and would tantamount to official business and should be deemed a policy guideline.

The minister had, as chairman of the IIT Council remarked on October 19 that Class XII marks should be given more weight in the IIT-JEE exams by raising the eligibility criteria from 60 per cent to 80-85 per cent. However the very next day he clarified that the only decision that was taken by the IIT Council was that a report on rationalising IIT-JEE be submitted by January 2010.

"It is entirely the decision of IITs to decide on the eligibility criteria," he said. The HRD ministry can in no way, either directly or indirectly, make any proposal," Mr Sibal stated.

The reports on the proposed changes in IIT-JEE triggered a hostile response from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who wrote to Mr Sibal saying "the rural students would miss out if the eligibility criterion to appear in the exam is fixed so high." In his reply, Mr Sibal said that the proposal was non-existent. "I would like to set at rest your concerns," he said.

Claiming that the media has quoted him out of context, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said that the decision on the eligibility criteria for IIT-JEE examination would be taken by the IITs themselves and not the Government.

Clarifying his point of view he read out the following statement : “The only decision that has been taken by the Indian Institute of Technology Council is that the IITs will submit a report in January, 2010 to rationalise JEE. It is entirely in their hands to decide on the eligibility criteria. It is they who will consider how much weightage should be given to the 12 class examination”, he said.

Hostile sentiments were also expressed by Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan — leaders from Bihar from where many aspirants take the IIT entrance test. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayavati, the BJP and the JMM also slammed the proposal — all smelling a design to deny seats to poor students and those from the hinterland.

Besides politicians, various educational experts have also condemned the decision. They alleged that class XII examination was just one scale to test the potential of the students. Since each state has its own board examination for class XII besides the two central boards — the CBSE and ICSE, — there are different scales for evaluating students in the country.

While the CBSE and the ICSE boards evaluate students generally on objective scales, the percentage of marks students attained in these boards was relatively higher. However, in state boards, students are evaluated on subjective scales. In the Himachal Pradesh School Education Board (HPSEB) also, a subjective scale is adopted for evaluating the class XII students. In Himachal very few students get more than 80 per cent marks, while the CBSE and the ICSE are slightly liberal in their marking system.

Experts alleged that it was not fair to bar the students from appearing in admission tests to IITs based on results of varied scales adopted by various education boards. By keeping eligibility condition at 60 per cent, more students were given a chance to perform on a uniform scale in the IIT test.

If the eligibility condition is increased to 80 per cent, the competition would be reduced to just a few students who attain more than 80 per cent marks and students of state education boards would become a deprived section, they said.

BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “Kapil Sibal appears to be in, too, much haste. He does not seem to go into the source of the problem, which results in poor performance. There are approximately 6 lakh schools in the country and of these there are more than 15 per cent, who have not a single teacher to teach the students. Students from backward region battle against lack of educational facilities and then come up to compete with the handful of better off students and this should be kept in mind.”

Prasad said, “Sibal is terribly confused. On one hand he talked of abolishing the marks system to reduce the burden on the students, on other hand he is now increasing the cutoff percentage from 60 to 85.