Indian Institute of Management (IIM), the nation's premier institute for management studies, is all set to hike their course fees this year. Nearly nine IIMs have decided to change their fee structure which is set to see a hike of around 5-17 percent for the 2018-20 batch.
The fee hike is reportedly due to higher operating expenses, faculty pay hikes and the infrastructure costs among other reasons. The top IIMs like Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, and Indore and newer institutes like Rohtak, Ranchi, Trichy, Udaipur and, Amritsar are the nine institutes out of 20 IIMs that are said to be part of the fee-hike, the Economic Times reported.
"Increasing fees is now becoming a compulsion for older and mid-level IIMs such as us. After the first 10 years, IIMs are required to generate their own revenue and sustain themselves through their own corpus. Faculty salaries go up, cost of messes goes up, hospitality costs, security, infrastructure, security goes up, thus necessitating a hike," Dheeraj Sharma, IIM Rohtak director, was quoted as saying by ET.
The students will have to shell out an additional Rs 80,000-2 lakh for their Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, depending on the institute. IIM Ahmedabad is set to be the costliest for students as the fees could go upto Rs 22 lakh for a postgraduate degree. IIM Bangalore sees an increase in fees to 21 lakh from 19.5 lakh while IIM Indore fees is set at Rs 16 lakh, ET reported.
Even the newer IIMs have joined the fee-hike bandwagon, as IIM Trichy fees go up to 14 lakhs from 12 lakhs. The institute director of Trichy, B Metri, claimed that the hike in fees is bound to happen due to the consistent quality of education that IIM provides to its students.
"IIMs have consistently been focusing on providing better quality education, many have international accreditations. Factoring in that, plus increasing costs, fees are bound to go up," Metri told ET.
According to management experts, the demand for good talents is high and the salary packages have also improved. While speaking on the hike, Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and head, education and skill development, KPMG India told ET that it was the "market that is determining the prices."
