India’s personal schools are going through sharp criticism as placement charges collapse and costs proceed to rise. In keeping with Knowledge Hatch founder and finfluencer Akshat Shrivastava, the common placement fee in personal schools has plunged from 60–80% in 2021–22 to only 20–40% in 2023–24, elevating severe questions concerning the worth of personal schooling.
Shrivastava, writing on LinkedIn, alleged that “99% of personal schools in India are a rip-off.” Regardless of declining placement outcomes, he stated, these establishments proceed to promote inflated ‘CTC’ packages, hike their charges, and push college students into deeper debt.
“They create an ecosystem: the place most academics do not know the right way to train, most college students do not even need to attend school. And, but the administration retains minting cash,” he stated. As the worldwide economic system shifts towards rewarding skill-based outcomes, Shrivastava warned that this conventional school mannequin “has no place.”
His criticism comes at a time when the price of schooling in India has surged dramatically. Between 1980 and 2020, common tuition, lodging, and different undergraduate bills rose by 169%, in accordance with the Nationwide Pattern Survey Workplace.
Graduate course charges elevated by 5.8% and postgraduate course charges rose by 13.19% between 2014 and 2018, whereas major schooling prices climbed 30.7% throughout the identical interval.
States like Maharashtra and Karnataka have seen even steeper hikes, with personal engineering {and professional} course charges rising 60–70% over the past decade. A non-public engineering diploma that value ₹1 lakh a yr in 2010 now prices ₹3 lakh yearly, reflecting a 200% soar.
Premium establishments have additionally seen steep will increase. IITs doubled their annual B.Tech charges to ₹2 lakh in 2016, and a full B.Tech now prices ₹8–10 lakh. An MBA at IIMs prices ₹20–25 lakh, whereas Ashoka College’s annual undergraduate charges rose from ₹8 lakh in 2018 to ₹12.28 lakh in 2024.
With schooling inflation working at 11–12% per yr, households are below rising monetary pressure — stretching their sources or falling into debt to fund levels that more and more supply diminishing returns.
