Apparently not all students feel the same way. From today's Guardian;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international ... 51,00.html
Don't cut our fees, say students
Revolt erupts as India moves to slash cost of courses at elite business schools in attempt to broaden access
Randeep Ramesh in Ahmedabad
Thursday February 26, 2004
The Guardian
It is the best education money can buy. For 150,000 rupees (£1,800) a year, graduates from the Indian Institute of Management are all but assured a better life. Jobs in the City of London or Wall Street in New York beckon, with average starting salaries of £40,000.
But students at India's six elite business schools are in revolt over fees: not because they are going up, but because they are being cut. The government says it wants to increase access to IIMs by cutting the cost of courses. The minister in charge of education, Murli Manohar Joshi, intends to slash fees to 30,000 rupees a year and make up the difference from state funds. Critics say that with elections looming, Mr Joshi is making a pitch for votes.
Amid the rolling lawns of the American-designed 25-hectare (60 acre) campus in Gujarat, some of the world's most wanted graduates are fomenting strife. Their case will be heard in the supreme court today.
"The government's logic is completely wrong," said Mohid Ali Khan, 25, who is in his final year of an MBA course and has accepted a job with the London-based bank HSBC. "The fees are high because the facilities here and the professors are world class and someone has to pay for them. If you reduce the income then the quality of education will also go down. This is just a political ploy ahead of the elections."
Privatisation
The IIM, set up in 1961 with help from Harvard University, gives students rooms with telephones, televisions, washing machines, computers and high-speed internet access. There are cricket pitches and tennis courts. Many of the lecturers have taught in top universities in the US.
At the heart of the issue is middle-class India's distrust of the state. The country began privatising its economy in 1991, and a few years later IIMs were allowed to start charging. The result is that a small but growing number of people have become richer and are now wary of government intervention. Mr Joshi's plans for IIMs, say his detractors, amount to renationalisation.
"These students will pay to keep education out of government hands," said Sandipan Deb, the deputy editor of Outlook magazine, who graduated from an IIM and is on the admissions board of the Calcutta campus. "Students simply do not trust government and worry that fees are just the thin end of the wedge in terms of state control. The last thing they want is the syllabus changed or the staff altered just to suit the tastes of a particular minister."
One worry is Mr Joshi's "cultural agenda". He is a self-proclaimed religious revivalist who has been accused of rewriting textbooks and ousting academics to give education a more "Hindu" flavour.
"Mr Joshi has already added astrology to the syllabus of other top universities," said Dipanjan Roy, secretary of the student body - the academic council - at IIM Ahmedabad. "He has tried to put forward his version of history by changing textbooks. What will be his version of business studies?"
Mr Joshi's office did not return calls yesterday, but told the Indian press that his decision was "in conformity with the government's principle that higher education should not be the monopoly of the rich".
The Economist magazine rated IIM Ahmedabad as the "toughest business school in the world to get in to" - not in terms of cost, but of competition. There were 127,000 applicants this year for 260 places. Students do not accept that the level of fees - more than 13 times the country's average income - deter applicants. They say there are grants for poor students and that banks are falling over themselves to lend money.
"I am borrowing 90,000 rupees this year," said Shweta Pereira, who is in the second year of an MBA course. "The bank rates are quite high, 12.5%. But we have companies coming here and offering to refinance the loan at rates of 4% to 5%."
A number of high-profile industrialists, including the billionaire Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, India's most successful software company, have lobbied the Indian prime minister over the issue. Mr Murthy said that instead of the state subsidising the studies of future Wall Street bankers, it should spend the cash on primary education - only 60% of Indian children up to the age of 14 are enrolled in schools.
"The government has commissioned reports looking at the cost of raising education spending to the recommended 6% of national income. But it has quietly dropped them," said Binod Khadria, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. "So why is government now saying it will find the money to fund elite professional courses when it says it does not have the money for more teachers and to pay them decent wages?
