Tuition fees at the National Institutes of Technology are set to jump threefold, bringing them on a par with those at the best private engineering colleges.Under a decision taken today, the NITs and the Indian Institutes for Science Education and Research will join the Indian Institutes of Management as publicly funded education institutions that recover their entire running costs from the students.This could raise the tuition fees at the 31 NITs above Rs 2 lakh a year from the current Rs 70,000, two NIT directors told The Telegraph.In contrast, the premier Indian Institutes of Technology charge about Rs 90,000 from their undergraduate students annually.An NIT director said the increased fees might drive some good students away to private engineering institutions.It wasn't clear how much the fees at the five IISERs, which now charge about Rs 10,000 a year, would rise.Under a formula adopted by the NIT Council, headed by Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani, the operating costs would be collected from the students while the government would spend on capital assets such as labs and equipment and on research.The government will set up a panel to work out the modalities. The operating cost includes the salaries of teachers and other staff as well as the expenditures on maintenance.However, the students will receive education loans with zero interest, to be repaid after the course is over, today's meeting decided.Education is now heavily subsidised at publicly funded institutions in India, with the government bearing a major slice of the running expenses. The few exceptions include the IIMs, where the tuition fees run into several lakh.A panel headed by scientist Anil Kakodkar had in 2011 worked out the operating expenditure of the IITs at between Rs 2.25 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh per student.Today's meeting did not take any decision on proposals to change the admission norms.The NIT selection process now gives 40 per cent weightage to candidates' Class XII board marks and 60 per cent to their JEE Main score.A panel headed by IIT Bombay director Devang Khakhar had recommended that the board weightage be scrapped and the NITs admit students solely on the basis of their JEE Main scores.A standing committee of the NIT Council accepted the suggestion to scrap the board weightage but recommended that the institutes admit their students on the basis of their JEE Advanced scores, like the IITs.However, at today's meeting, some members argued that the weightage to board marks had helped more girls and rural students secure admission. It was decided to set up a committee to study the impact of the board weightage on admissions.The Telegraph, Kolkata