Therefore no one has had the political will to tackle this subject. College students have a good deal, and the merest murmur of an increase leads to angry graffiti on dormitory walls. After all, once students get in, they can hardly afford not to go to college. At Jawaharlal Nehru University, the premier graduate school in New Delhi, not only is the tuition just pennies a month, but the monthly rent on a dormitory room in a city with notoriously expensive housing is about a dollar, according to S. Chandrasekaran, the registrar. What's more, students receive cheap passes for the city's buses and discounts for air and train travel.
Some Indian students treat college as being worth no more than what they pay for it.
Sonam Yangcheng, a first-year student at Delhi University, says many of her classmates go to school only for the social life. They come to campus but don't go to class. They sit in the canteen all day and flirt and gossip. Such behavior worries Mr. Wilson and others, who fear that charging a pittance for tuition has cheapened learning in India. I've been saying this all along, but not many people are listening.