With the race for medical seats set to intensify thanks to the sky-high entrance exam scores, several private deemed-to-be universities across the country have increased their MBBS tuition fees at unprecedented rates.
An analysis of the fee structure for academic year 2024-25 of the deemed colleges indicates that there has been an increment at almost half – 27 out of 55 – of the deemed institutes with most of these colleges charging anywhere between Rs50,000 and Rs2.5 lakh more than 2023. However, the annual fees at two deemed colleges have soared by Rs6 lakh, while two others have witnessed a hike to the tune of Rs5 lakh, taking the highest tuition fee to a whopping Rs30 lakh.
This is a much steeper fee hike than the one recorded last year, when the differential for almost all colleges was less than Rs2 lakh, except in the case of one institute that raised the fees by Rs3.5 lakh.
The new fee structure comes in the backdrop of an extraordinary swelling of marks scored in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-Undergraduate, the gateway to MBBS. The inflated scores prompted allegations of irregularities in NEET results, with many candidates and petitioners moving the Supreme Court to seek a retest. While the court refused the plea, the National Testing Agency (NTA) was asked to reassess one of the test questions, resulting in relatively fewer students at the top.
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The highest fee increase of Rs6 lakh has been recorded at two medical institutes under Coimbatore-based Amrita Vidyapeetham in Kerala’s Kochi and Haryana’s Faridabad. That’s a 32% rise over Rs19 lakh charged by both the institutes last year, taking their tuition fees to Rs25 lakh per annum. There was no fee hike for MBBS at the university last year.
The Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research in Chennai, which charged Rs25 lakh in 2023-24, has increased its fees to Rs30 lakh this year – the highest in the country.
Incidentally, both these institutes are the only deemed universities with medical schools featured in the top 100 higher education institutes ranked by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024.
Of 14 deemed colleges in Maharashtra, DY Patil University in Kohlapur has posted the highest fee hike of Rs2.5 lakh, taking its annual charges to Rs23.1 lakh. The two other deemed universities run by the same management in Pune and Navi Mumbai, have fixed fees at Rs27 lakh, which continues to be the highest in the state.
According to Muzaffar Khan, a Thane-based medical education counsellor, the fee hike is concerning and will lead to further commercialisation of medical education and profession. “Is it a mere coincidence that the highest-ranked deemed colleges have increased their fees the highest? There needs to be some regulatory mechanism to put a limit on such spikes,” he said.
