IIM-A hikes fee by Rs 1-lakh

Study in India’s top management school is going to be costlier for the new students as Indian Institute of Management–Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has hiked the course fee of its flagship two-year Post Graduate Management Programme by Rs 1-lakh raising from Rs 11.5-lakh to Rs 12.5-lakh for the batch 2010-12.

Now, students for the new batch would have to pay Rs 50,000 per annum more for the two-year post graduate course. The new fee will be Rs 6.0-lakh in first year and Rs 6.5-lakh for second year.

This new fee structure will be implemented on only first year of 2010-12 batch. No fee increase would be applicable on existing students who will enter into their second year or the new entrants who will get the admission in this June for the first year.

The decision was taken by the Board of Governors in a meeting on Sunday (March 29), informed Sameer Barua, the Director of IIM-A to the media.

Describing the reasons behind this latest hike, Barua said, ‘rising expenditure, salary increment of faculties (due to implementing the sixth pay commission’s recommendation) and growing numbers of other backward class (OBC) students are mounting the pressure on the institute’s corpus.’

The Ministry of Human Resource Development last year had directed all higher education institutes and universities, including Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and IIMs to accept the admission of OBC candidates by raising the number of seats, instead of hiking their quota share without hurting the fate of other students.

Moreover, Institutes also charge no fee on those qualified students who belong to lower income category as in 2008-09, as many as 21 students had not paid even a single rupee for course fee to IIM-A, according to Barua.

‘The IIM-A had launched a need-based fee structure scheme - the fee according to family income - to grant concessions to students whose family income was less than Rs 6 lakh a year, and the scheme will continue in the coming years too,’ he said.

Earlier last year, IIM-A had increased the fee more than double for the course from Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 5.5 lakh for the first year and to Rs 6 lakh for the second year, and which was implemented for the batch 2008-10 PGMP.

Still advocating the recent fee hike, Barua said that despite doubling the fee last year, the institute suffered a tentative loss of Rs 5 crore (approximately) because of the concessions granted to various categories of students.

With this, other IIM institutes may also follow the same path of increasing course fee as they did last year. So, it is expected that other management institutes would soon come up with their revised fee structure for the new batches.