The Union Ministry of Human Resource and Development has agreed to the most of the demands made by Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) over the autonomy. The demands were made in the IIM Bill.
As of now, the HRD Ministry will have ‘negligible or no say’ in matters related to the main recruitments except that of the director, fee determination, the composition of the board of governors, powers of coordination forum and a number of government nominees on the board.
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One of the officials of HRD Ministry opined that since IIMs are charging market prices from the students as course fee, there was an assumption that while talking about the fee control in the private sector, the IIMs must no go untouched. However, this has not been accepted either by IIMs or the higher officials of the government. Now, the IIMs will have autonomy over the fee determination. The primary objective of the bill is empowering IIMs to grant degrees instead of diplomas. However, the institutes felt that this would affect their autonomy.
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According to the changes in the bill, the governing board, alumni of IIMs will have five posts and one post is nominated by the government. The coordination forum of IIM led by HRD Ministry will be an advisory body rather than the decision-making body.
One of the officials opined that autonomy for IIMs is essential to take the institutes to the next stage of development. This will also facilitate the institute to improve global rankings.