Becoming an #MBA gets tougher as fees rise, scholarships ebb

MUMBAI: In a double whammy for management students, fees of the top schools have risen significantly even as scholarship disbursal on the campuses has slipped.

The Indian School of Business (ISB) is the latest to raise its fee for an MBA degree to Rs 24 lakh. Its move followed the IIMs’, which cit ed rising costs and shrinking government funds to up their sticker rate. The increases come even as almost one in every three freshmen is unable to pay the fees and needs loans or scholarships, said a faculty member.

In 2009-10, IIM-Ahmedabad handed out fee waivers amounting to Rs 8.3 crore on the basis of annual family income. That has halved. Last year, 239 students got schol arships and the college handed out Rs 4.8 crore. For 2016-17, financial aid is being offered to 251 PGP and PGPFABM students, 29% of the total student strength.

At IIM-Bangalore, 45 students of the 414 in the 2015-17 batch were granted financial aid. Eight got 100% tuition fee waiver for the full course of two years The Indian School of Business (ISB) on Thursday defended its fee hike, but offered a sweetener. There will be an increase in the number of scholarships at the institute. Currently 10% of the class gets aid; for the incoming batch of 2017, 15% will get scholarships. “While we had a marginal increase last year, this is the first significant fee hike in the last four years. We feel it is time for a correction,” said Prof Dishan Kamdar, deputy dean (academic programmes), ISB.

“Increasing fees is not a sustainable way to build corpus and meet the demands of the future,” said former IIMKozhikode director Debashis Chatterjee, who is now a tenured professor of Human Resources Management at IIMLucknow. “At the same time, there is no denying the fact that costs are increasing and capital expenses are huge.But institutes must devise innovate ways to raise money.”