This is your inside pass to India’s top B-Schools. Whether you’re choosing the right one, navigating...
10 hours ago
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Read a post on reddit which highlighted a real issue. IIMs charge anywhere between ₹21–25 lakh for an MBA. And here’s the irony they’re government institutions, Institutes of National Importance.
No IIT, DU, JNU, or even AIIMS demands this kind of fee. Not for undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral education combined. So why are IIMs built on public land and supported by public money charging fees comparable to private B-schools?
And no, I’m not “poor enough” to qualify for full scholarships. I’m also not “rich enough” to pay this without taking on years of debt. If I take an education loan, the risk is real. What if I don’t land a ₹25 LPA job? What if I end up with a ₹12 LPA role in a metro, juggling rent, taxes, EMIs, and basic living costs?
At some point, this stops being about merit and starts being about financial survivability. Why has access to quality education in India become either a privilege for the wealthy or a high-stakes lottery for the rest? It’s frustrating. It’s deeply unfair. And strangely, no one wants to talk about it.
4 Replies
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"Do you think the solution lies in government intervention to cap tuition fees, or should we push for more income-share agreements (ISAs) where repayment is tied to actual post-MBA earnings?
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ISAs sound great in theory, but they would likely lead to 'cherry-picking' by the institutes, where they only admit students they are confident will get high-paying jobs. We need systemic funding support rather than private financing models that shift the risk entirely onto the student
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The structure of these institutes is inherently paradoxical. They operate as 'public' entities regarding their land and legacy, but they function as profit-maximizing corporate entities regarding their cost. By pricing out the middle class, they lose the very diversity of thought that makes an educational institution great, replacing it with a homogenous group of high-risk takers
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We often talk about 'ROI' in terms of salary, but we rarely factor in the psychological toll of a 25L debt. When the base salary for 'average' roles hasn't scaled proportionally with the fee hikes over the last decade, the 'IIM premium' starts looking more like a liability for the middle class
