NEET PG Counselling 2025: MD fees cross Rs 2 crore at 8 colleges, 313 courses cost over Rs 1 crore

NEET PG Counselling 2025: In possibly the highest single-year fee hike for a medical course, a private deemed university in Karnataka has increased the annual tuition fee for MD in Radiodiagnosis and MD Dermatology from Rs 31.5 lakh to Rs 70 lakh, amounting to a Rs 38.5 lakh or 122% surge. Add Rs 81,000 in 'other fees' and Rs 50,000 as 'university fee', and the cost of the three-year postgraduation (PG) touches Rs 2.14 crore.

In fact, the fees for most of postgraduation clinical courses at the Sri Siddhartha Academy of Higher Education (SSHAE), Tumkur (Karnataka), a deemed university run by the state home minister G Parmeshwara, have skyrocketed for the academic year 2025-26. The medical college, SSMC Tumkur, is now among the most expensive in the country.

However, with yearly charges of Rs 76 lakh (Rs 2.28 crore course fee), MD Radiodiagnosis at the Santosh Deemed-to-be University's medical college – Santosh Medical College, Ghaziabad – remains the costliest PG course in this category of institutions. Sree Balaji Medical College (SBMCH Chennai) is a close second, having hiked the annual fee of its radiodiagnosis and dermatology programmes by Rs 5 lakh each to reach Rs 75 lakh (Rs 2.25 crore course fee).

Last year, only eight courses at four institutes cost above Rs 2 crore, while 260 (37% of 700 programmes reviewed) had crossed Rs 1 crore mark.

Admission to PG medicine is based on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test - Postgraduate (NEET PG) and the counselling process for deemed universities is handled centrally by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) under the Directorate General of Health Science (DGHS) and ministry of health. NEET PG counselling 2025 has begun and the first round of choice-filling is open.

MCC NEET PG Counselling 2025: MD fee hike

The privately-run deemed universities regularly face scrutiny over their exorbitant fees. Highlighting the high cost of medical education in private medical colleges, the parliamentary panel on health, earlier this year, had sought a 50% reduction in fees and curbs on capitation fees.

Given below are the 10 most expensive programmes and the changes in fees over the past year.

Highest PG medical fees at deemed universities (in Rs per annum)

While most deemed-university medical colleges keep their annual fee constant for a particular batch, some have fixed annual increments. Also, in some cases, the institutes levy other charges besides the annual fees. The institutes usually have different fee calculations for non-resident Indian (NRI) candidates.

This year, around 44% of the scrutinised courses are costing more compared to the previous year, while 55% have persisted with last year's charges. A handful of programmes have witnessed small drops, too.

Sri Siddhartha Medical College, which has seen the sharpest hikes, was recently in the news for all the wrong reasons. In August, the Karnataka High Court had directed the deemed university’s medical college to pay Rs 15 lakh as compensation to a student who was allegedly wrongfully denied admission to MBBS in 2017-18. Earlier this year, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had searched organisations linked to the minister, including SSHAE colleges, as part of its Ranya Rao gold smuggling case probe.

Doctor of Medicine Fees: Clinical branches cost more

While the difference spans across medical specialisations, a higher proportion of clinical branches have recorded a hike compared to non-clinical ones such as pathology, microbiology, community medicine and pharmacology.

There continues to be a stark disparity in the fee structure for clinical branches and relatively less-popular non-clinical streams. While the former can cost aspirants anywhere between Rs 9 lakh and Rs 76 lakh a year, the latter are priced as high as Rs 20 lakh and as low as nill – as in the case of microbiology and pharmacology programmes at a few institutes.

Given below are the top fees for each branch of MD, the medical college charging it and the change over last year’s.

Top MD/MS fees by branch (in Rs per annum)

Academia360 had earlier reported a similar hike in undergraduate medical programmes at the deemed university colleges. The maximum per annum MBBS fees has now reached Rs 30.5 lakh, or Rs 1.37 crore for the four-and-a-half years of the programme at the Sree Balaji Medical College; with hostel, mess and university fee worked in, students at the Tamil Nadu institute will be shelling out well over Rs 1.5 crore.

The report also showed that the number of deemed university colleges with a crore-plus overall UG tuition fee has doubled from 16 in 2022-23 to 32 today. As many as 36 or two-thirds of 54 deemed universities have revised their MBBS fees this year, while the remaining 18 retained last year’s rates.