Sibal to discuss key demands at today's meeting with IIT faculty

HRD minister Kapil Sibal is meeting the IIT council for the first time under his chairmanship today. The meeting is expected to help chalk out a multi-pronged policy to deal with all outstanding issues.

The meeting is expected to discuss among other issues, the introduction of scholarships with fee reduction to attract more foreign students to post-graduate level programmes at the institutes.

The council will also decide on creation of extra seats for foreign students at the PG level to ensure greater participation of students from across the borders in research and development work.

Currently, foreign students are required to pay more fees than Indian students. The fee structure for foreign students too is not uniform at present, with differential fee structures on considerations of Saarc and non-Saarc nationalities.

However, irrespective of their nationality, foreign students are required to pay much higher fees than Indian students, which results in the IITs attracting less foreign students.

Sibal said the IITs attract mainly students from developing countries who often find it difficult to pay the huge fees and drop out.