Three fee tiers, and what each one actually buys
Under ₹1 lakh, ₹1–2 lakh, above ₹2 lakh. The differences within a band are far smaller than the marketing suggests.
Fees for online and distance management programmes in India fall into three fairly clean bands, and the useful move is to decide which band you are shopping in before comparing anything.
Under ₹1,00,000
Open universities and autonomous institutes. Fully entitled where the university holds entitlement; from about ₹32,000–38,000 at the bottom. Thin on live teaching and support. Within this band, programmes are close to interchangeable on paper.
₹1,00,000 to ₹2,00,000
Private university online programmes. Genuinely better taught and supported. This is also the band where fee disclosure is worst — the advertised figure is frequently per semester, with examination and certificate charges arriving later.
Above ₹2,00,000
Brand-led programmes. You are buying a name and a cohort. Both can be rational purchases. Neither is recognition, which you already had in the first band.
Decide the band on what you need. Decide within the band on total fee and entitlement.
The one question. Ask any institution: what is the total I will pay from admission to holding my certificate? The answer, and how readily it comes, tells you more than the brochure.
More in Money
Money
The ₹2 lakh online MBA is selling you the same degree as the ₹38,000 one
Below a certain price the differences are real. Above it, you are buying teaching and a cohort — not recognition. Almost nobody says which one they are selling you.
MoneyPlacement claims on online MBAs are almost entirely unverifiable
The number in the brochure is the highest package, from an unstated cohort, over an unstated period. Ask for the median and watch what happens.
MoneyThe real cost of an online MBA is not the fee
Two years of evenings is the same for everyone, whatever they paid. That is what makes the cheap programme such good value and the abandoned one so expensive.