Ahmedabad: Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad (IIM-A) shells out more than 20% of its total fee income as fee waiver during academic year 2011-12. As per sources, IIM-A has introduced family income-linked fee waiver policy in 2008 and in the last academic the total fee waiver was more 10 crore to Post-graduate Programme in Management (PGP) and PGP-ABM (Agri Business Management ) students, a sum that is highest so far.
Moreover, in the year 2008, IIM-A hiked fee for the PGP from 4 lakh for two years to 11.5 lakh. Later on, it justified the shift by saying the new fee structure also took into account the waiver the institute decided to offer to the students coming from weaker financial backgrounds. In 2009, it raised the fee by 1 lakh while in 2010, it raised fees by 1.20 lakh. Recently, it has decided to increase fee for two-year PGP programme by 5.5% (bringing the total fees to around 14.50 lakh).
In 2008, IIM-A introduced various slabs for fee waiver based on annual family income between less than 1 lakh to Rs 6 lakh. Professor Ajay Pandey, head of IIM-A's financial aid committee said that in the in the academic year 2010-11, the institute earned more than 45 crore from fees of PGP and ABM. He said on the other hand, they have given fee waiver of more than 10 crore to around 280 students of PGP and around 50 students of ABM. He also mentioned that in the academic year 2009-10, the institute had given fee waiver of more than 8 crore to around 310 students of PGP and ABM.
Professor Pandey also added that as the fee and the batch size both increased in 2010, their waiver also increased. He said that financial aid given to the students in 2010 is the highest so far.
