The country's foremost management institute needs a whole new business model. Now!
The weather in Ahmedabad was playing the perfect host on December 10, 2011. It was the last day of the golden jubilee celebrations of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, the best business school in the country. The Louis Kahn Plaza was full with professors and alumni who had come from all over the world, who after a two-day tango with nostalgia and foxtrot with the future, were looking for relief. That’s when the headline act of the evening appeared in a metallic blue salwar kameez, the first strains of Raga Bhoopali (Mohanam) accompanying her to the stage. “I never thought I would return one day here in this way—to sing for you,” she said.
As Trilochan Sastry, professor, IIM-B, says, “The biggest difference between IIMs and foreign B-Schools is that in the US they are competing for students, whereas in India we are competing for faculty. Government is not a challenge in getting this talent, neither are salaries. It is how you manage the whole process of recruitment. You have to respond very quickly to these applicants because if you delay things, they get picked up very fast. The other is, what kind of academic environment are you willing to provide? Having said that, we do need to improve faculty salaries.”
Remember, IIM-A even today can take in only 0.5 percent of the people that want admission into its hallowed portal. “Assuming that 10 percent of those taking the test are as bright as those IIM-A takes, many who don’t get in prefer to work for a few years and then seek admission in an ISB or other global schools,” says Bakul Dholakia, former director, IIM-A, who is currently the director of Adani Institute of Infrastructure Management. It was during his tenure that IIM launched the one-year PGPX programme, perhaps the one successful “new product” to come from IIM in the last 20 years.
THE FUTURE IS ALUMNI
This, of course, challenges the current culture of IIM-A. Changing that culture will not be easy. Because the faculty have came up in a certain way and are good at teaching. So, they will continue to teach. “One can argue that a new set of research-oriented, young professors can be brought in, but who will select them? It’s the existing faculty, who tend to lean towards teaching than towards research. And as a result, you end up getting younger professors too, who are oriented towards teaching,” says a former IIM-A professor.
(This story appears in the 14 September, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)