Money in the Bank
Ajanta, Vinay and Sreenivas talk about stipends, arrears and fees
Congratulations to all PG students for receiving their much awaited eight thousand rupees. However, if you are still worried about how to pay your fees (assuming that you are hardly left with any bank balance) and are wondering if you can pay them off from the arrears dated from April 2008, then keep reading this article.
In case you are still hooked on to the question of why it took so long to give the stipends, here’s what the GSAA has to say, “IITB provides stipends to students such as RAs, MPhils and DDs at rates and by criteriadecided by itself. Any change here needs to be initially approved by the Board of Governors before implementation.” This is the process that took so many months.
Coming to the increased stipends, MTech Teaching Assistants will get a flat Rs. 8000 stipend. The rest of the stipends are as shown in the table. The actual good news is for the Dual Degree students, where a CPI of 8 to 10 will fetch Rs. 8000, a CPI of 6 to 8 will get Rs. 6000. For the first time, people with a CPI of less than 6 can become TAs if there is a requirement in the department. The amount will, of course, depend upon the performance.
Programme Year Amount Then (Rs.) Amount Now (Rs.) MTech TA All years 5000
8000
MTech RA 1st Year 6000
10000
2nd Year 6500
11000
3rd Year 7000
12000
DD 5th Year 5000 (CPI > 8)
8000 (CPI > 8)
3000 (7 < CPI < 8)
6000 (6 < CPI < 8)
Nil (CPI < 7)
If required by Department
Yet, people who are running off to a mall to celebrate, don’t forget that you have to pay an increased differential fee amount for the last semester and the revised fee for this semester. While MTech second year students have to pay the differential amount of the semester fees only, MTech first year students will have to pay the differential amount of semester and tuition fees.
Fees payable (Rs.) Programme Year Category With Hostel Without Hostel MTech, MPhil, MDes, PDGIIT First Non-sponsored 8475 5375 Sponsored 28475 25375 Institute staff Nil 2100 Second Non-sponsored 4000 900 Institute staff 350 350 M.Mgt First All 4000 900 Second All 5975 2875 PhD, MSc+PhD, DD Second onwards All 4250 1150 Third onwards Institute staff Nil 350 The fees for DDs have not been decided upon. If DDs have to pay according to the MTech scale, it is not clear whether they should receive pay corresponding to that of a TA or a sponsored candidate? It would be unfair to ask a DD who does not get a scholarship to pay according to the sponsored MTech rate.
Many of us have wondered why it is that every time there is increase in stipends there is also an increase in fees. The Dean of Students’ Affairs says, “The fee hike was pending for a long time, and it has nothing to do with stipends.”
Yet the greatest question still remains: when are the arrears coming? The Deputy Registrar in the Academic Section says, “The work of the Academic Section is over. I am sure no major calculation is involved. If the Finance Section wants to do it, they can”. He asserted that he would try to fix the last date for fee payment as 31st December, so that students will hopefully receive the pending amount by then. At the finance section, we were told that the entire amount required to pay off the arrears for the current batch (Rs. 1.28 crore) is available. Thus, we’ve hopefully seen the end of the saga of stipends.
Ajanta Akhuly, Sreenivas Subramanian and Vinay Kumar are PG students of the HSS, Industrial Engineering and Electrical Engineering Departments. They can be contacted at ajanta@iitb.ac.in, ssreenivas@iitb.ac.in and vinaykumark@iitb.ac.in.
