ISLAMABAD: Despite a clear fee cap notified by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, private medical and dental colleges across the country have begun charging parents far above the legal limit for the 202526 academic session, with fresh admission letters and bank challans showing demands ranging from Rs2.5million to over Rs3.5million, pushing thousands of families into financial distress and exposing the growing power of what parents openly call a private medical college mafia.
Under PMDC’s official notification issued last month, the tuition fee for private medical and dental colleges for the 202526 session was fixed at Rs1.89million, including all ancillary charges. For the ongoing 202425 session, the cap was Rs1.8million.
The regulator also warned colleges not to charge anything beyond the notified amount and advised parents to report violations through its complaint portal.
Yet documents, admission offers and fee schedules circulating among parents tell a very different story.
In Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar, parents say colleges are demanding between Rs2.5million and Rs3.5million as an upfront payment, often with less than 24hours’ notice, threatening to cancel seats if the money is not deposited immediately. In one case, a private medical college asked for Rs1.94million as “remaining college fee” after the student had already paid the UHS fee, effectively pushing the total well beyond the PMDC cap.
Another college has issued a formal fee schedule demanding Rs2,489,107 at the time of admission through a bank draft, along with a long list of original documents that must be surrendered before enrolment is processed.
“These colleges are not even pretending to follow the PMDC notification,” said a father in Lahore whose daughter was selected on open merit.
“They hand you a bank account and say deposit Rs2.5million today or the seat goes to the next candidate. Who can fight when your child’s future is at stake?”
Parents say the problem does not end with the so called tuition fee. During the five years of study, colleges routinely charge an additional Rs8lakh to Rs1million per student under various heads such as examination fees, lab charges, university affiliation, clinical training, library, IT services and even graduation costs. None of these are transparently regulated or capped, allowing colleges to quietly recover millions more from each student while claiming on paper that they are within the official limit.
Amina Naseem, whose daughter recently secured admission at a private medical college in Islamabad, said she was shocked when the college demanded more than Rs2.5million within a single day, despite the PMDC cap.
Other parents echoed their anger, saying that repeated appeals to the PMDC complaint portal have produced no relief.
An official of the PMDC said the medical colleges’ association had obtained a stay order against the regulator’s move, but stressed that the issue had now been taken up by a high powered committee headed by the deputy prime minister, which was reviewing the matter at the highest level.
