📰 From the news · Overcharged / hidden fees
The fee is fixed by the commission, not by the college: Nepal's 2025 agreement to stop private medical colleges charging above the official MBBS rate
Nepal is the closest MBBS destination for many Indian students, with a curriculum and exam culture that feel familiar, and a fee that is, in law, set by the state. The gap between the legal fee and the invoice is one of the oldest disputes in Nepali medical education, and in 2025 it was back at the ministry.
According to Nepalnews, students' unions protested after some colleges charged more than the Medical Education Commission had stipulated, and a meeting at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology bringing together the commission, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu University, Kathmandu Medical College, Nobel Medical College, parents and students ended with an agreement that institutions would not be allowed to charge more than the commission's prescribed fee. The dispute is not new: the Kathmandu Post reported in 2019 medical students asking the home minister to act against private colleges that refused to refund fees collected above the ceiling. A Nepalnews opinion piece in 2025 described a related problem, "phantom faculty", qualified doctors who exist on paper during regulatory inspections but do not teach.
For an Indian applicant the fee structure is the whole point. Agents quote packages of Rs 45 to 75 lakh for a Nepali MBBS; the commission's fee is a published figure in Nepali rupees, payable to the college, and the difference is where the money goes. Some of the difference is legitimate hostel and living cost; much of it is the agent's margin and "donations" the 2025 agreement was meant to stop.
What to do. Get the commission's current fee schedule for the college you are considering; ask the college, in writing, what it will charge you per year and for what; refuse any component described as a donation, development fee or "management contribution" that does not appear in the schedule; and keep receipts, because the refund fight of 2019 was won by students who had them. Nepal's colleges are real and its degrees are recognised in India; the risk is not the college, it is paying twice the fee for it.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.