IIMs hike aid for students with dreams but no money

MUMBAI:The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are taking their resolve to make education on their campuses more inclusive a step further by increasing the size of scholarship disbursal and financial aid to needy students even as tuition fees have gone up substantially over the past few years.

Currently, the institute charges Rs 11 lakh for the two-year programme in business management; three years ago, fees were at Rs 4-5 lakh. From 2004-05 to 2007-08, the size of financial aid each year was about Rs 20 lakh, but went up to Rs 1.8 crore in 2009-10," says professor Prashant Mishra, chairman, PGP, IIM Calcutta.

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"Financial aid allows such students to go for higher studies or start their own ventures where remuneration might not be good. Thus, they won"t have to worry about furnishing a loan," adds Mr Mishra.

The IIMs have increased their fees over the past few years in an attempt to accommodate the 27 percent increase in the other backward caste quota and a rise in general category students on campus.

However, the number of students securing financial aid has also gone up to 126 last year from 21 in 2007.

The aim, as the institutes see it, is to make management education available to more people. "A large section of our population faces not just economic deprivation but also social deprivation because they don"t get to bond with the best minds," says Debashish Chatterjee, director, IIM Kozhikode.

At IIM Ahmedabad, the disbursal figure between 2008 and 2010 has crossed Rs 7.61 crore from Rs 5 crore in the previous two years. The institute has over 250 students in the two-year post graduate programme who are being given financial aid.

IIM Bangalore, too, increased its disbursal from Rs 1.9 crore in 2008 to Rs 4.4 crore. "One of the reasons why it was crucial for me to get financial aid was because I had already taken a loan to pursue my engineering degree. This made me ineligible for obtaining another loan for management studies. Luckily, my education at IIMB was not compromised due to financial reasons," says a first year student at IIM Bangalore.

The younger IIMs, like IIM Kozhikode, too are not far behind. The institute increased its allocation from Rs 1.06 crore for the 2010 batch to Rs 1.21 crore for the 2011 batch.

The institute has also started a centre called Crest, which trains engineers and graduates who come from less privileged backgrounds, to enter IIMs. IIM Indore is planning to spend about 8-10% of its earnings as scholarship for students in the coming school year. IIM Lucknow spent more than Rs 40 lakh on financial aid in 2009.