BE, MBBS courses are long-term investment plans

Updated on: Friday, June 24, 2011

For the past three weeks, the discussions at Senthil Kumar's house have been on long- and short-term investments that will fetch enough profits to support his son Sandeep Kumar's medical education . The family knows that despite having 198 marks as cut-off , Sandeep has little chance of getting admission to a medical college through single-window counselling .

The cutoff marks for the open category this year is estimated to be 199 .75. Students who score less will have to be accommodated using the caste quota . The Kumars , who belong to the forward community , will not be eligible for it. The family has to pay anywhere between 30 lakh and 50 lakh as capitation fee and 3 lakh to 7.5 lakh as annual fee for the MBBS course . That's not all . Some medical colleges have given them an option of paying advance capitation fee for a postgraduate course , which is anywhere between 1.5 crore to 2 crore for courses like radiology , cardiology and gynaecology . "In new colleges , we will have to spend at least 42 lakh for

MBBS . In popular ones it may cost up to 80 lakh ," says Senthil Kumar , who works in the marketing department of a private company .

Former director of medical education Dr S Vinayagam said that the lack of adequate medical colleges was one of reasons for increase in illegal capitation fee. "Presently , the demand for seats is extremely high and the colleges are making the best out of it. Once the government increases the number of colleges to one or two in every district , this problem will settle," he said . The fees in the government college are less than 15,000 per year . This year , anticipating a huge demand in seats , private medical colleges have jacked up prices of everything from application fee to tuition fee.

If the Kumars choose to put Sandeep in an engineering college they would have to contend with the fact that the cut-off marks has gone up by 1 to 1.5 points . A good difference , specially when a student is keen on getting the stream of his choice. While the top engineering colleges could charge anything from 7 lakh to 12 lakh for a seat , second-level colleges take around 3 lakh to 4 lakh .

The bargaining begins well before the student even writes the board exam . One school principal talks about a parent who booked a seat in an engineering college by paying 1 lakh in January . The rest was paid after the higher secondary results came out.

Times of India

BE, MBBS courses are long-term investment plans

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