Around 100 students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay began a spontaneous sit-in protest at the main building of the institute on Tuesday after they were denied to meet the director to submit an open letter against the fee hike. The sit-in protest lasted for around an hour until finally a few of the authorities of the institute came to receive the letter and assured the students that they would look into the demands.
Students at the premier technology institute in Mumbai’s Powai area are raising their voices against the exorbitant fee hike in master’s and PhD courses. According to information provided by students, the fee structure for both is increased by 45 per cent, in the recently declared fee circular for the autumn semester.
“The break-up fee structure for existing Master’s and PhD students shows significant increase under all the heads, except the tuition fees. This includes — hostel fee registration fee, medical fee, examination, electricity and water charges, hostel and mess establishment charge, student accident insurance fund, student benevolent fee, and gymkhana fee among all, taking the total fee structure from Rs 16,500 to Rs 23,950,” shared a student while explaining further that the new admissions are the worst hit.
“Their fee-hike is huge with an exorbitant jump in the cost of tuition fees too. For PhD, the tuition fee for new batches is Rs 5,000, which is Rs 2,500. Whereas for Master’s students, the tuition fee has increased to Rs 25,000 from Rs 2,500,” explained the student.
The open letter submitted to the institute administration, which is signed by around 1000 students, demands a complete rollback of the fee hike. The letter also highlights that the fee hike puts an additional financial burden on the students while they are already suffering under the effects of steepened inflation and the after-effects of the Covid pandemic. The students have also mentioned discontent in the manner the fee hike was introduced, as students’ representatives were not consulted.
The students have formulated a student’s collective named IIT Bombay students against fee hike to coordinate the protest. Apart from a complete rollback of the fee hike, the other demands put forth by the collective are: extension in the deadline for the fee payment, increase in the fellowships for the research scholars and transparency in the expenses incurred out of the fees paid by the students. The collective has appealed to the students not to pay the fees until a decision is reached regarding the rollback of the fee hike.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘444470064056909’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
