Rising Cost of Higher Education

Came across this infographic in my email, worth sharing and something to mull over.

Cost of Higher Education

Interesting to note that the incremental costs of a higher capitation does not necessarily translate into commensurate incremental benefits. Is brand value in education at such a premium?

I remember when I was in IIM Indore, the fees were fairly low and I was happy to get into a first grade b-school at less than 4 lakhs INR. These days when I see the fees, I tell the MBA aspirants that forget a b-school degree, the opportunity cost would be too high. Shouldn’t this rising cost of higher education consolidate somewhere and correct its ever rising trend?

What do you think?

4 thoughts on “Rising Cost of Higher Education”

  1. In 2003-05, the avg compensation to cost ratio was at least 1.5-1.75. Now it is around 0.9-1. I have had the same thought earlier too. In India its no longer worth doing an MBA unless you get admission to one of the top colleges.

    1. The problem I am realizing is that even with the top colleges, breaking even will take some time. Not to mention that even the top colleges have problems during placements these days!

  2. I guess the article was U.S. centric (I didn’t read the entire thing). In India, things are not as bad as the west since economy is still growing a bit, but then it’s definitely very different since when we graduated. I paid like Rs. 10,000 for a year for Engineering and I can only smile about the ROI. :)

    Anyway, IIMs have basically dumped their own heads into the sand. From a seat count of around 100, you cannot take it to four times within 5-6 years but that’s what happened in IIMI and IIMK. That’s basically stupid and definitely doesn’t talk about management sense.. no wonder placements are suffering. I can’t even think of faculty quality and infrastructure issues!

    1. Yep! I clocked around 20k for my entire 4 years of Engineering :-) and that was awesome! A news article in one of the IIM blogs said that the placom faculty made a statement akin to “We are here to provide education, not placements”.

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