IIM Fee hike and corporate side effects

From the day I heard the news that I got offer to join PGSEM course, class of 2008 I started to think whether to accept this or not. One of the prime reasons is ofcourse the course fee. The entire course for 2.5 years costs about 7.5L. The regular PGP course offered by IIM Bangalore costs 8L for 2 years. The rising input costs, Srikrishna commissions' recommendation to hike salaries has mandated IIMs and IITs to raise the fees. The popular comment you hear anywhere to justify the fee hike by premier educational institutes of India is after completion of course, the average salaries offered are so high that students can afford to pay these fees. This fee hike definitely has a great impact on students who are fresh out of college joining the program. On the flipside there are many students who are sponsored from their companies for higher studies. The current allocation from corporates for these programs must accommodate the higher fees. One could say "no big deal, the corporates have lot of money and funds for higher education are not so much", but look at it, atleast IT companies will be thinking twice with raising dollar and shrinking margins from US projects. More-over this fee hike requires almost more than doubling the current allocation in the budgets. Assuming most of the companies finish their budget exercises before March, the academic year 2008-2009 definitely would not have got any higher allocation. Since the fee hikes (actuals) were announced in the last two months. anyway, the bottom line is, someone in my company who could do PGSEM program sponsored by my company last year could not do this year without investing remaining 50% of the course fee from his/her pocket !!! :-( :-( :-(