In this article let’s take a look at reasons why MBBS is very expensive especially private medical colleges in India.
This is the most comprehensive article you can find online on this topic so I would recommend you to bookmark the article and share it with your friends.
So without further ado let’s dive right in.
Why is MBBS so expensive mainly private medical colleges in India?
Getting MBBS degree from private medical colleges in our country is almost an impossible task for many middle class Indians because of high cost as a matter of fact,
It will take you more between 50 lakh to 1 crore rupees to get your MBBS degree from private medical college, which is very expensive, It is because of higher cost of education, less focus of government to control and regulate fees of private medical colleges, Competition and other factors.
Note: before we begin, I would emphasise on private medical colleges at the end of the day medical colleges for private people are like business and return of investment is the primary motive of any businessman, if any businessman is spending some money he would definitely expect a good return of it and it is also similar with private medical colleges in India. This is important to understand why medical colleges are expensive.
Now let’s take a look at all the factors which make MBBS degree expensive in our country.
Land requirement
One of the primary factors that make medical college especially private ones are expensive is because of the land requirement.
If you want to start a medical college in India then the rules and regulations are such that the campus should be constructed in a land of at least 20 acres long and you should be either owning it or take it for lease for 99 years to start a medical college according to the government rules.
Now, 20 acres is large amount of land required to start medical college, Now the value of the land will depend upon the location, for example if you want to start a medical college in any city then the cost would be higher as compared to starting a medical college in a rural area so most of the medical colleges are set up and constructed in far rural areas because of less cost of land as compared to the city.
This is one of the important factors and investments businessmen are making to set up a medical college.
Cadavers required
And the next factor is of the requirement of cadavers.
You see, MBBS students study both in a university and in a hospital, they learn theoretical, clinical part and prepare themselves for hospitals and do the practical part, treat patients in the hospital and apply whatever the knowledge they have learnt from the university in hospital.
In such a case, cadavers are very important to let the students learn about the anatomy of the human’s, dissect and understand different parts of the body such as bones muscles heart lungs brain so that they can learn about surgery and understand the human physiology.
But the problem is requirement of cadavers, not many people are willing to donate the dead body for dissection in the medical college and this cadavers are very expensive by the way, they will be exchanged between the universities in high prices which is also one reason for expensive education in private college.
Infrastructure & facilities
another reason is infrastructure and facilities, as I already mentioned earlier you need to both run a university and hospital to start a medical college because doctors are once who study both in university in getting critical knowledge and also in hospital to implement the knowledge and get practical experience.
but it can become very costly to set up and maintain all the infrastructure and facilities required to start a hospital and also university along the way.
There are different types of infrastructure like rooms classrooms hostels labs auditorium cafe library computer lab, etc on the other hand you also need to run a hospital which requires a lot of beds, run various departments like ophthalmology dermatology cardiology,
microbiology pharmacology, anatomy physiology biochemistry, and many more departments of medical science and hire staff, get all the microscope, tables and all the required equipments to run the hospital and its departments.
All of these are big investments that private people make to set up a medical college.
Competition
Another reason is competition.
You should know that more than 14 lakh people write the NEET exam every year, NEET exam is the entrance exam for medical colleges in our country, both government and private, and The total seats in NEET are 83,075 MBBS, 26,949 BDS, 50,720 AYUSH and 525 B.VSc & AH.
Even if we assume 7 lakh students which are half of the number of people who write the exam every year want to do MBBS and become a doctor, there are only 83000 seats in both government and private medical colleges including AIIMS, then you can see that there is a huge competition and demand for seats.
It is a simple understanding of demand and supply, if there is a high demand and less supply or availability of seats in medical colleges then obviously the price for each seat will be low and if there is low demand and high supply of seats then the price for the individual seat will be less.
In this case, We can see there is less number of medical seats but more people are trying to do MBBS so the price of the individual seats is high in medical colleges.
This is also one reason for high price and expensive medical colleges fees in India.
Less focus on government
Another factor is obviously less focus of government on medical colleges.
The government of India spends 2 to 3% of the GDP on health and infrastructure facilities and also building new medical colleges, giving more seats so that more people can become doctors to fulfill the demand and supply gap in doctors and health infrastructure in India.
This is small amount as compared to other countries and there are only 215 government medical colleges, 275 in private ones, there are only 42000 seats available for MBBS in government, and 52000 seats available in private ones.
So you can see there are more private colleges and seats as compared to government colleges for medical education.
Now there is a reason for this, AIIMS Government College which is the top medical college in India, it invests 98 lakh rupees to produce single MBBS student out of the college but the fees is around 850 RS per year.
So government spends a lot of money to give MBBS degree to a single student and the fees in government medical colleges is very cheap as compared to the expense of the course because government colleges are not run for profit like private ones and according to the data
The medical colleges would be established at an estimated cost of Rs.189 crore per medical college for Which funds would be shared between the central government and the State governments in the ratio of 90:10 for North Eastern and Special Category states and in the ratio of 75:25 for other states.
But there is lack of good leadership, teamwork, & large degree of corruption, and lack of funds, government not regulating the fees of private colleges.
All of these combined together create the problem of expensive education in private medical colleges in India.
Now, the solution would be that the government should regulate the admission fee in private colleges, the government should also spend more money on building new colleges, seats because
there is a huge demand for doctors in India, but the government is not spending as much as required in health and infrastructure field in GDP, and also the costs are very high to set up a medical college, This is why private medical colleges are very expensive to get into in India.
With that said let’s end the article.
Conclusion
These are all the things you need to know about why private medical colleges and MBBS degree is very expensive in our country.
Do comment down what are your thoughts about the MBBS degree in the comment section below.
Share the article and subscribe to my blog to receive notifications regarding whenever I publish a new article in future.