New Delhi, Feb. 3: The IITs are proposing an eight-fold increase in student fees from Rs 50,000 to Rs 4 lakh a year under sweeping proposals the institutes will present to the government tomorrow.

The institutes will propose to human resource development minister Kapil Sibal that the fee hike be spread over 10 years with a Rs 35,000 mark-up every year. The plan is aimed at helping the IITs become self-financing institutions.

The directors of the IITs will also unveil a plan to meet crippling teacher shortage through a scheme to attract fresh M. Tech graduates as “faculty interns”.

But the directors have failed to arrive at a strategy on how to increase the weightage of marks obtained in school-leaving examinations while selecting students.

Tomorrow’s meeting, officially described as a brainstorming session, has been called by Sibal as a follow-up to a session of the IIT council — the highest decision-making body of the institutes — on October 19, 2009.

At that IIT council meeting, each institute had decided to prepare a reform blueprint on specific issues. IIT Kanpur, tasked with proposing a financial structure to help the engineering schools gain financial autonomy, has suggested the eight-fold fee hike.

In its presentation, the IIT has said calculations had shown that the institutes spend Rs 4 lakh — or $10,000 — a student annually.

In order to be financially independent of the government, the IITs need to earn this amount through student fees, IIT Kanpur has said. At present, the IITs charge Rs 50,000 a year.

An annual hike of Rs 35,000 will enable the IITs to charge Rs 4 lakh a student in 10 years, the institute has said. The proposal will also ask the government to provide a corpus for each IIT specifically to pay off pension dues.

IIT Delhi, given responsibility for preparing a roadmap for attracting faculty, has suggested a scheme titled ‘Catch them young’ to lure fresh M. Tech graduates. M. Tech graduates at IITs will be asked to join as “faculty interns”. They will have to take only two to three classes a week and will be encouraged to pursue their PhD for the rest of the time.

They will be paid better than students who pursue only their PhD, and will not be burdened with administrative tasks.

IIT Madras was asked to work on admission reforms. Without going into specifics, the institute has repeated plans voiced by Sibal after the October council meeting to increase the weightage of school-leaving marks in IIT admissions.

The IIT has suggested a preliminary screening to restrict the number of applicants from over 4 lakh a year to around 1.2 lakh.

But it has rejected using the All India Engineering Entrance Examination -- used by the National Institutes of Technology and most other engineering colleges -- to pick or even shortlist students.

IIT Bombay, asked to suggest reforms to improve the research output of the IITs, has suggested that the government create a separate funding category for research.

At present, research funding is a part of the total money an institute receives from the government. Separating the research funds will ensure a dedicated budget for research, according to IIT Bombay.