Subharti distance MBA: the nine questions we get asked
Subharti is one of the names that reaches the ask box already half-decided. Someone has been given a fee, a list of specialisations and an assurance, and what they actually want to know is much narrower than any of that: is the thing at the end of it a degree, and will it hold where I need it to hold?
So this page is built the way the rest of this desk is built. Nine questions in roughly the words they arrive in, the direct answer first, then the part that matters. Where the honest answer is “no”, or “not for that purpose”, it says so rather than working around it.
Is the Subharti MBA a real degree, or a course certificate?
A degree, and a university’s own. Swami Vivekanand Subharti University in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, confers this MBA with the UGC entitlement behind it — distance and online describe how you study, not the instrument you receive.
The university is NAAC A accredited. What you hold at the end is a master’s degree issued by a university — not a completion certificate from a training provider, which is a different thing wearing similar language.
The standing advice on this site applies here exactly as it applies anywhere else: entitlement runs per programme, per mode, per session; get it in writing for the session you are joining, and keep the reply in the same folder as your receipt. Why the session matters is worth two minutes before you commit.
Who teaches me, and whose name goes on the degree?
Two different bodies, and the difference is the whole page. The degree and its entitlement come from the university; the distance learning centre in Lucknow — IICT — does the teaching.
Spelled out, IICT is the Indian Institute of Commerce and Trade. The teaching, mentoring and study support all come from it; the MBA award and the entitlement do not sit with it, and it does not hold the entitlement for it. Swami Vivekanand Subharti University does both.
That is a normal arrangement and there is nothing to be nervous about in it. What you should be alert to is anybody blurring the two into one organisation, or using the names interchangeably as though they were the same institution. If the person explaining the programme cannot keep those two roles apart in a single sentence, that is a reason to slow down.
What does it cost, in total?
₹65,000, complete, for the two years.
One figure for the whole programme, which is already more useful than a per-semester number you have to multiply yourself. It sits below the ₹1–2 lakh band that private universities generally occupy, and above the floor set by the open universities and autonomous institutes — see what an online MBA actually costs for where the bands sit.
Do the one thing this desk asks on every fee, every time: get written confirmation that the figure carries you from admission to certificate. Examination charges, project charges and certificate issue are the three places money reappears later. What is normally left out of an advertised fee lists the rest.
How long is it, and what do I specialise in?
Two years — and you carry two specialisations, not one. It is a Dual Specialisation MBA.
The five available are Human Resource Management, Strategic Management, Operations Management, Finance and Marketing.
Choose the pair the way a hiring manager will read it, because that is the only place the pairing does any work. One specialisation that matches the desk you already sit at makes your CV coherent; one that matches the desk you want next makes it a case. Finance with Operations Management reads as a manufacturing or lending back-office track. Marketing with Strategic Management reads as someone angling for a general management seat. The same two years produce a different story depending on how you pair them.
Will employers accept it?
Most private employers accept an entitled degree. The exceptions are policies that say “regular” or “full-time” in writing — and those you can read in advance.
The general position is set out in will employers accept an online MBA, and nothing about this particular university changes it. Acceptance is decided by the wording of a recruitment policy, not by the mode of study in the abstract.
Is it the same as a full-time MBA from a campus?
Same instrument, different mode — and the certificate usually states the mode.
A degree awarded in distance or online mode is still a degree awarded by the university. Most universities print the mode on the certificate, which is ordinary practice and not a defect: whether the certificate says “online” covers why.
There is exactly one place where the distinction bites, and it is worth knowing before rather than after. If an eligibility clause insists on a “regular” or “full-time” degree, the mode on your certificate is the thing that will be read. That comes up most often in public recruitment — is an online MBA valid for a government job explains why the advertisement, and not any general assurance, governs.
IICT also has its own diploma. Is that the same thing?
No. An IICT diploma is IICT’s own award, not a UGC degree, and UGC purview does not cover it; IICT itself says exactly that.
IICT has taught from Lucknow since 1997 — an autonomous institute, constituted as a society under the Societies Registration Act of 1860 — and the diplomas it issues go out under its own name. The Subharti MBA is a separate proposition: a university degree, with the university’s entitlement behind it and the university’s name on the parchment.
That said, do not read “diploma” as “lesser”. The IIMs themselves ran as registered societies until the IIM Act — in force from 2018 — and what they awarded then was the PGDM, a diploma at post-graduate level and not a degree. Nobody in Indian recruitment treated an IIM PGDM as second-rate, and nobody should have. The instrument tells you which rules a qualification satisfies. It does not tell you what the teaching was worth. Is a PGDM the same as an MBA unpacks that properly.
What is the Amity connection I keep hearing about?
Amity University holds an academic MoU with IICT. It is institutional collaboration, and it does not put Amity’s name on anything you receive.
This is worth stating plainly because memoranda of understanding get repeated in conversation until they sound like a joint degree. They rarely are, and this one is not. Your degree comes from Swami Vivekanand Subharti University. Your teaching and mentoring come from IICT. The Amity MoU produces neither, and no certificate, transcript or marksheet in this programme will carry Amity’s name.
If anybody offers the MoU as a reason to enrol, treat it as you would any other claim you cannot see on paper: ask what document you will actually be handed at the end, and ignore everything that will not appear on it.
What should I check before I pay anything?
Entitlement in writing for your session and mode; ₹65,000 confirmed as the complete figure; and payment made to the institution, never to an individual.
- Ask which body awards the degree and which body teaches. You already know the answer from this page. Ask anyway — how cleanly it comes back tells you who you are dealing with.
- Get the entitlement confirmation for the programme, the mode and the session you are joining, in writing, and keep it. How to check a university is genuine is the five-minute version.
- Confirm ₹65,000 is the total, admission to certificate, with examination and certificate charges named explicitly one way or the other.
- Pay the institution’s own account. Not a personal account, not cash, not an OTP shared over a call. How to tell whether a counsellor is genuine lists the rest of the signals.
- Keep every document you are sent. The people who have trouble two years later are almost always the people who kept nothing.
None of that is specific to Subharti. It is what you would do for any distance degree, and it is the reason this desk exists.