IIM-A hikes course fee, set to introduce changes in curriculum

Ahmedabad: India's premier business school Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) announced a fee hike ranging from Rs 1.9 lakh to 2.5 lakh for three of its flagship courses.

Courses whose fees have been hiked include Post-Graduate Programme in Management (PGP), PGP-Agri Business Management (PGP-ABM) and PGP for Executives (PGPX).

The new fee structure would be implemented from the next batch of 2015-17, IIM-A Director Ashish Nanda said.

"For PGP and PGP-ABM, which are both two-year courses, the fee will increase from Rs 16.6 lakh to Rs 18.5 lakh. The one-year PGPX course fee has also being raised from Rs 21.5 lakh to Rs 24 lakh for the batch commencing from April 2015," Nanda announced during a press conference here on Tuesday.

With this hike, which came after a gap of two years, IIM-A has become the first IIM in the country to hike its fee in two years, Nanda said.

"To remain financially self sufficient, the institute needs to raise its fees. For PGP and PGP-ABM programmes, the tuition fee hike is 10 per cent, whereas our administration costs are high due to inflation. The cumulative fee hike for all three programmes is about 11 per cent," Nanda said.

Besides fees, Nanda also announced several innovations and changes in IIM-A's existing programmes and admission rules, effective from next year.

As per recommendations of the PGP-ABM review committee, IIM-A has decided to restructure it and rename it as PGP-FABM (Food and Agri Business Management) from next year onwards, PGP-FABM programme chair Vijay Paul Sharma said.

"With the emergence of processed food industry in recent times, the programme curriculum has been redesigned to address emerging needs of the food and agri-business sector. We are also opening up the programme to non-agriculture background students to make it more diverse in terms of academic backgrounds," Sharma said.