New Delhi, Nov. 4: IIT Delhi is planning to request its 45,000-strong alumni to contribute a small percentage of their wealth to their alma mater, taking after a practice followed by several American universities.
The institute also plans to ask its faculty to get into development and incubation of technology.
The premier tech schools, now heavily dependent on central funding, have been asked by the human resource development ministry to slowly become financially independent.
IIT Delhi director Ramgopal Rao told reporters the twin initiatives were expected to generate good revenue.
"In institutions in the US, each alumnus gives one or two per cent of their wealth to the institute. We are planning to ask our alumni to make a similar contribution," Rao said.
Deputy director Ashok Gupta said the US government gave tax benefits to people making voluntary donations to their alma maters.
"Already some of our alumni living in America are donating a certain sum. But we are planning to put in place a system to encourage and enable all alumni to contribute," Gupta said.
At present, the IITs bank on government funding to meet expenses. While the annual tuition fee charged from a student is Rs 2 lakh at the BTech level, the annual expenditure on him/her is about Rs 6.5 lakh. More than half the students also get some kind of tuition fee waiver.
IIT Delhi spends about Rs 900 crore annually on its running costs. Only 15 per cent of this is met by earnings from tuition fees.
Sanjeev Sanghi, the dean for international relations, said a new initiative called Stay-Con would be started soon to encourage alumni to get connected with IIT Delhi and its activities.
The tech school will also aggressively push technology development and commercialisation to augment its earnings. "We are building science and technology parks so faculty members would be more involved in technology development, start companies to incubate technology and manufacture products," director Rao said.
An IIT Delhi alumnus, Anurag Rathore, has been appointed associate dean for corporate relations to focus on interaction with industry and understand the need for technology in industry.
