MBA Fees Increase 2026: Why They’re Rising, and Where Low Fees Hold

Updated 9 October 2026 · Survey figures from Business Today (30 September 2026) · College fees from our directory

What the survey found

According to Business Today’s reporting, three numbers stand out. The average fee at the top 25 schools rose by about 3%. Revenue from executive and management development programmes fell by 27% at the top 25 and fell significantly across the top 100. And at the top ten, government-sponsored research and consulting revenue nearly quadrupled in a year, from about ₹5.3 crore to ₹20.9 crore on average.

Read together, the picture is of schools whose traditional side income softened while their costs kept climbing, and who are trying to replace the income through research and consulting work. Fees are the lever that’s easiest to pull.

What’s pushing costs up

The article names four pressures, in this order of weight:

• Faculty. The largest cost. India’s PhD pipeline is thin, and schools compete with industry and with global institutions for the same people.
• Technology and AI. Data platforms, analytics tools, digital studios and AI-enabled learning.
• Research. SPJIMR, for example, reports a 34% rise in research investment.
• Career services and industry engagement. Placement offices and corporate relationships need sustained spending.

There’s also a structural reason cost lands on students. Indian B-schools have historically underinvested in endowments and alumni giving, and donor-funded chairs are rare, so there is no large cushion to absorb a cost increase. One director quoted in the piece, Kiran Neti of Great Lakes, put the limit plainly: a school “cannot sustainably compete by continuously increasing fees.”

What 3% means in rupees

Three per cent sounds small. On a ₹10 lakh programme it is ₹30,000; on ₹20 lakh it is ₹60,000. That’s a real amount, but it’s an average across the schools surveyed, and the survey covers the top 25 only.

What this survey doesn’t tell you

The colleges this site covers mostly sit outside that top 25, so we can’t claim the same 3% applies to them, and we don’t have year-on-year fee data for our directory yet. What we can show is the fee structure as it stands: the total fee runs from ₹0.5 lakh to ₹28 lakh across the 197 colleges, a spread of more than fifty times, and the cheapest tier is mostly public institutions that don’t price like a private school.

Here are the colleges in our directory that charge ₹2 lakh or less in total:

Before you get excited, read the last column. Most of these admit through a university or state test rather than CAT alone, which is the real price of a low fee: the sub-₹2 lakh guide sets out which test each needs, and the fee ladder shows what ₹1, ₹2 and ₹5 lakh each buy.

How to compare costs properly

1. Ask for the total programme fee, not the first-year fee. Two-year programmes quoted per year look half the price.
2. Add hostel, mess and exam costs. For a student moving cities these can be a large share of the real bill.
3. Check the fee year. A fee quoted for last year’s batch may not apply to yours.
4. Weigh placement against fee. The ROI index ranks colleges by average placement divided by total fee.

Questions people ask