I'm in my early 30s, roughly 8 years into a data-heavy corporate function, currently in a mid-level management role.
Some time back I took an education loan of a little over ₹13 lakh from an NBFC at around 10.4% floating, to fund a strategic/general business management programme.
Fast forward a year. It has given me nothing. No job change. No promotion I can honestly attribute to it. No network I actually use. No skill I couldn't have picked up on my own. I'm not being dramatic — I've genuinely gone looking for the return and there isn't one.
I'm posting the numbers:
What the loan actually costs
Borrowed: ~₹13.5 lakh
EMI: ~₹18,100 for 120 months
Total repayment over the full term: ~₹21.8 lakh
Of that, ~₹8.3 lakh is pure interest
The sticker price was ₹13.5L.
The real price was ₹21.8L.
That number is never on the brochure, and it's the only one that matters.
The part that stings more
Around 18 months in, I had paid roughly ₹3.2 lakh in EMIs. Only about ₹1.2 lakh of that had touched the principal. The rest went to the lender as interest.
That's how front-loaded amortisation works. For the first several years you're mostly paying rent on the money. Most people signing these loans have never seen an amortisation schedule and have no idea this is how it behaves.
What I should have asked before signing:
Not "will this help my career." Everyone answers yes to that in their own head.
Instead:
Can I name three specific people who did this exact programme, at my exact experience level, and got a measurable outcome? No testimonials on the website. People I found myself and spoke to directly. If I can't find three, that's the answer.
What is the total repayment, not the fee? Make them say the full number out loud.
Is "placement support" actually a placement guarantee? For mid-career programmes it almost never is. Career services usually means a resume workshop and portal access.
Would I pay this out of savings? If the answer is "no, but the EMI makes it manageable," then the loan is doing the persuading, not the value. That's the trap. ₹18,000 a month feels survivable in a way that ₹21.8 lakh does not, and that gap is exactly where these programmes live.
Who these programmes are actually built for
There is a real audience. People switching domains entirely. People who need a credential to clear an HR filter. People whose employer is paying. People early enough that the network genuinely compounds.
I was none of those. I was several years into a specialisation, doing fine, and I bought the idea that I was plateauing and needed a credential to break out. That feeling was real. The credential was not the fix.
If you already have domain experience and a functioning career, a ₹13L general management programme is very unlikely to be the thing that unlocks the next level. Your work is. Your manager is. Moving companies is.
Where I am now
I'm closing the loan early by liquidating an equity portfolio that was its own separate disaster — badly concentrated, deep in the red. Between the programme and the investing mistakes, I'm well over ₹15 lakh behind where I'd have been doing nothing at all except a boring fixed deposit.
I'm not posting for sympathy. The money's gone and I'm fine. I'm posting because when I was researching this, everything online was either marketing copy or someone six months in, still in the honeymoon phase, who hadn't started repaying yet.
Nobody writes the 18-months-later post. So here it is.
TL;DR: ₹13.5L programme cost ₹21.8L with interest. Got nothing from it. Before signing any mid-career management programme, find three real people at your experience level who got a measurable outcome from that specific course. If you can't, walk.
