Students of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi are protesting in the campus against HIGH tuition fee and UNRULY hostel and mess charges.

IIMC is an autonomous Society under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Founded in the year 1965, IIMC is supposedly the best media institute in the country. Societies as such are supposed to run on “no profit no loss” basis whereas at IIMC the fee is sky high and increases at a rate of 10% every year.

“1,68,500 for a ten-month course plus hostel and mess charges is unaffordable to a middle-class student let alone a poor fellow. There are students who would have to leave the course after the first semester” says Astha Savyasachi a student of English Journalism at IIMC.

The fee structure for various courses for the year 2019-20 at IIMC runs as follows:
1. Radio & TV Journalism: 1,68,500
2. Advertising and PR: 1,31,500
3. Hindi Journalism: 95,500
4. English Journalism: 95,500
5. Urdu Journalism: 55,500

In addition to this, hostel and mess charges at around 6500 for girls and 4800 for boys is charged every month which is very high, considering IIMC to be a Public funded institute. Also, not every student has been given a hostel accommodation.

“For the past one week we are trying to seek redressal of our issues through dialogue but the Administration has remained keeping a blind eye to our issues saying it is beyond their ambit to alter the fee structure. Now, that we have tested the other resorts, protest is the only option ” says Hrishikesh, a student of Radio& TV Journalism at IIMC.

Affordable education is the right of every student of the country and if they work hard to clear an All India entrance test their expectations have to be taken into consideration. We cannot allow Media Institutes to be accessible only to the people who can afford to pay lakhs. Education, after all, is a right and not a privilege.