Around 2,500 years ago, Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesushad pronounced: "The only constant in life is change." Think ofchange as a never-ending game - 'The Change Game', if you like. Asin every other sphere, The Change Game resonates through the 2011edition of Business Today's annual special issue on businessschools, or B-schools, as well. So, ladies and gentlemen, let usbegin from the very top. The familiar order of A-B-C - or IndianInstitute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and IIMCalcutta - played itself out eight times in the 11 earlier rankingswe have done since 1998. But in this year's BT-Nielsen ranking ofIndia's Best B-schools, the top trio has shuffled into B-C-A. Forthe first time since 2002, IIM Bangalore finds itself perched at thetop. What has helped it most is its unmasked ambition for growth andan increased thrust on research.
Another significant change is in our methodology to rank the B-schools. For the past eight years, the responses of a perceptualsurvey by our partner Nielsen were wrung through its 'WinningBrands' model to arrive at brand equity scores to rank the B-schools. This year, too, we did a perception survey, but did notapply the Winning Brands model. Instead, scores were assigned to theresponses of the five groups of stakeholders - MBA aspirants,current MBA students, young executives at companies, recruiters(human resource heads and functional heads), and permanent facultyof B-schools - across various parameters. These scores wereaggregated, the highest scorer was assigned a score of 100, and theremaining scores were indexed to it. This makes the scoring morelinear and simpler.
In the context of business education in India, an MBA degree froman IIM has always been the key to riches, glory and recognition.This year's ranking of the Top 10, too, suggests that at a time ofturbulence in the economy, global and local, brand IIM is consideredthe safe house. For the first time ever, the top six colleges areall IIMs. The B-C-A trio is followed by IIM Indore (IIM-I), IIMLucknow (IIM-L) and IIM Kozhikode (IIM-K), in that order. While IIM-I and IIM-L are familiar members of the Top 10 club, IIM-K rejoinsit after nine years (see Dramatic Rise). IIM Shillong, too, joinsthe snoot club in style this year, catapulting to #9 from #15 lastyear.
Naturally, others have wilted. The Indian School of Business(ISB), Hyderabad, a top-tier school in the league of the IIMs, hasdropped one slot from #7 to #8. The two institutes that share the#10 rank, Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi,and XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, havealso taken a tumble, from #4 and #6, respectively, last year. OnlyIndian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi, shot up to #7from #11 last year. That it is increasingly gaining equity in the B-school ecosystem is evident from the fact that last year, too, ithad jumped to #11 from #17 in 2009. Backing these changes are vitalinsights on crucial shuffles at the very foundation of the systemthat schools the business leaders of tomorrow.
The vital triggers
Hard questions are being asked: Do our schools shape enough youngleaders? What measures are the B-schools taking to reform theirpedagogy? Why will our young, bright talents opt for Indianinstitutions, if they can study abroad? What will the entry offoreign B-schools mean for their Indian counterparts? In its goldenjubilee year, IIM-A has come up with some answers of its own. "Ourvision is to build on 'thought leadership', and come up with newparadigms in management thinking which are different from westernmodels," says Samir K. Barua, Director, IIM-A (see Nifty at 50).Barua's statement comes at a time when leaders such as Jairam Rameshin governance and N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys have accused topinstitutes of not doing enough research. Others such as PritamSingh, Director General, International Management Institute, or IMI,suggest Indians have clung slavishly to western models of thinkingthat are inadequate for Asia.
Happily, good institutes admit to their need for research, andsome have already initiated moves to create intellectual property.For instance, IIM-C has set up a finance lab that gets real-timedata and news on companies from different stock exchanges. These arethen converted into sentiment scores to predict share pricemovements. Unfortunately, "For this lab, we were sanctioned Rs 20crore from the government, but the money has not come yet," saysShekhar Chaudhuri, Director, IIM-C.
At another level, B-schools are layering functional programmeswith courses that equip students with soft skills. IIM-L, forinstance, has an elective on leadership through literature. AndPramath Sinha, founding dean of ISB Hyderabad, has initiated analternative value-add to education with The Young India Fellowship,a oneyear course in New Delhi that includes subjects such asListening, Psychology, Plato's Republic (Philosophy), and CriticalThinking and Writing, besides regular management content.
The foreign hands
A big change on the horizon is The Foreign Education Bill, whichonce approved by Parliament, will allow the entry of foreignuniversities and other education providers into India. Should our B-schools be worried? "Yes, good institutions are likely to come, andwe could all do with some healthy competition," says IIM-A's Barua.
Some are already here. For instance, Glasgow-based StrathclydeBusiness School has set up the Strathclyde SKIL Business School(SSBS) in Greater Noida partnering the Nikhil Gandhi-promoted SKILInfrastructure. "Strathclyde will completely control the quality ofeducation by providing the curriculum, faculty and also studentexchange for a term," says Bhimaraya Metri, Dean of SSBS, whorecently joined it from Management Development Institute (MDI)Gurgaon.
GD Goenka Group, partnering the UK's Lancaster University,launched GD Goenka World Institute in Sohna near Gurgaon in 2009,which offers a two-year postgraduate diploma in business management.And the GMR Group has announced its decision to collaborate withSchulich School of Business of York University, Toronto.
But it would be inaccurate to assume that Indian B-schools willbe lightly regarded once the foreign biggies swagger in. A case inpoint is 24-year-old Gopal Balakrishnan, a first-year student at IIM-A. He had Berkeley, Harvard and Columbia in his consideration listwhile interning at Cisco after his engineering degree at SardarPatel Institute of Technology, Mumbai. But on getting a call fromIIM-A (where he had also applied along with ISB), his decision wasclear. "The opportunity cost here is terrific. Besides, India iswhere the growth and opportunities are," he says.
The Foreign Education Bill also brings the matter of autonomy ofIndian B-schools into sharp focus. "How is it that we struggle toprove our worth but do not have any say in designing the curriculum,whereas the foreign players can fix student fees, facultycompensation and design their own curriculum totally unhindered,"asks H. Chaturvedi, Director, Birla Institute of ManagementTechnology (BIMTECH) at Greater Noida.
Last year, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)triggered acrimony by sending a notification to state-funded B-schools which sought to curb their power to design their coursecurriculum and duration, determine their fee structures, and eventheir selection of an examination model for students. While IMI'sSingh feels AICTE's role is not only to grant approvals, he alsoquestions its attempt to paint all institutes - includingestablished ones such as IMI and XLRI - with the same brush.
The IIMs, of course, can now choose their own directors, butaccording to IIM-C's Chaudhuri, faculty fee is an issue. "If we hadthe freedom to match salaries of US universities, we could havedrawn better talent," he says. "But this may not be possible giventhe cost structure and environment in our country." In a double-whammy, what also hurts is the lack of good faculty.
The Department of Management Studies (DMS), IIT Delhi, forinstance, needs at least 23 people now, according to Sudhir K. Jain,Head of Department. "We follow stringent selection norms. The entireacademic background has to be sound. That's why a large majority ofthose who apply to us fails to fulfil the criteria," he says.
Positive shuffles
Even as the business education community grapples with autonomyand faculty issues, a positive change is beginning to happen atanother level. Corporate consortiums are aiding institutes, not justwith funding, but also with time to help develop curriculum andmentor students. For instance, the School of Inspired Leadership(SOIL) in Gurgaon, was co-created in 2009 by a consortium of 32companies. When Anil Sachdev, Founder and CEO of SOIL, started theventure, he approached his former consulting clients. Luckily, hedid not need funding support, but he asked them to invest time in co-creating the curriculum and also in mentoring students closely."From day one, each student has a mentor from the industry whospends time with him or her on key issues," says Sachdev.
Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai, founded in 2004by Kellogg professor Bala V. Balachandran, has five centres ofexcellence partnering TVS Capital Funds, which created the T.S.Srinivasan Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship for conductingresearch in entrepreneurship. Union Bank of India helped create theUnion Bank-Great Lakes Center for Banking Excellence and a FacultyChair as part of this.
Surely these are welcome moves for an industry feeling the pinchof not having enough employment-ready talent. "There has to be aninvestment from our side where we aid institutions in understandingour requirements," says Chandrasekhar Sripada, Head of HumanResource, IBM India/South Asia, which helps some B-schools designtheir programmes.
B-schools are also just beginning to wake up to the power oftheir alumni network. "The initial response to fund and to partnerthe institute in mentoring students has been terrific," says IIM-A's Barua. The emotional connect certainly helps. "IIM Bangalorehelped me with my discipline and perspective, and also in valuingwork-life balance," says Sonjoy Chatterjee, a 1994 batch graduateand Chairman of Goldman Sachs India (Securities). This respecttranslates into hires from the institute.
As India's business education ecosystem evolves and matures toprime itself for a world where India and Indian companies will playan increasingly key role in the global economy, change will indeedbe the only constant going ahead. Heraclitus, you see, was a trulywise man.
Additional reporting by Somnath Dasgupta, K.R. Balasubramanyam,Manu Kaushik, Dearton Hector and Geetanjali Shukla
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