Management education has become even more expensive. From this academic year, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) across the country have hiked fees by over a lakh for their post-graduate programmes.

IIMs are not the only B-schools which are implementing the new fee structure, Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB) has also followed suit.

“The decision to increase the fee structure has been taken to help the institute build facilities including expansion of our infrastructural capabilities, providing better facilities to students as well as salary revision of the faculty,” Debashish Chatterjee, director of IIM Kozhikode, said.

IIM-K has hiked its fee by Rs 2 lakh effective from June this year. The total fee for the two-year PGP course stands at Rs 10 lakh for the academic year 2010-12.

Similarly, IIM Indore, has also increased its fee for the two year programme to Rs 10 lakh from Rs 8 lakh earlier. “We took the decision to increase the fee about six months ago and this fee structure will be effective from this new academic year,” VK Gupta, dean, administration at IIM-I, said.

IIM Calcutta and IIM Shillong are also expected to join their peers in hiking course fee soon. An IIM-C official said the institute is exploring an increase in fee and will hold a board meeting on April 3 to decide.

IIM Ahmedabad was the first among the country’s premier institutes to announce a fee hike by Rs 1.2 lakh. The new fee for its two year post-graduate management programme (PGP) will be Rs 13.7 lakh. Similarly the increased fee at IIM Bangalore will be Rs 13 lakh up from Rs 11.5 lakh.

IIM Lucknow is the only one which will not increase its fee this year. According to Dr Devi Singh, director of IIM-L, last year, the institute increased its fees to Rs 8 lakh for the two-year programme from Rs 5 lakh. “Hence, we are not looking at an increase this time,” he added.

ISB has also hiked its academic fee by Rs 1.5 lakh. The new fee including admission and tution fees will be Rs 16.5 lakh for its one-year post-graduate programme (PGP) for the batch joining in April 2010.

The fee structure, according to the ISB website, includes an admission fee of Rs 2 lakh and a tuition fee of Rs 14.5 lakh.

Besides this, the accommodation, books, laptop, alumni membership fee and meal expenses will be about Rs 2.66 lakh, taking the total cost of studying to Rs 19.16 lakh. According to the institute the fee hike is just an inflationary measure. Further it is also increasing the student intake from 440 to about 600.