17-04-2014, 05:01 PM
India’s Top B-Schools
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With an economy on fast forward mode and a growing domestic market, India is poised to become one of the
world‟s largest economies in a very short span of time. The key to explosive growth is in scaling up the existing
infrastructure, which means that billions of rupees would be spent to make it world class. This represents huge
employment opportunities and the entry of multinational giants into this sector. The huge population base with
its new found zest for integrating with the world economy would add to this and help propel India achieve
fantastic growth rate. This high speed growth of the Indian economy, both current and anticipated, will result in
the creation of thousands of enterprises catering to the diverse needs that such an economy throws up. With this
comes the attendant need for high quality trained manpower to manage and operate such enterprises. It is this
explosive growth that has resulted in a great demand for „management graduates‟. With most of the Old
Economy, family-run businesses also looking to join this growth bandwagon by revamping their enterprises on a
war-footing, time has never been better for management graduates.
With the rest of the world also experiencing an upsurge in economic growth, the war for qualified manpower
(read management graduates) will intensify. It is this rising demand for talent that has resulted in the
mushrooming of management institutes across the country.
Within a very short period, the number of such institutions has crossed 1000, with scores more being added
every year. However, the quality of education offered across these institutions differs vastly. At one end of the
spectrum one can see world-class education being imparted at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to
abysmally low quality at the other. (In this article, the terms B-Schools and management institutes have been
used interchangeably.)
Of the 1000+ institutes offering management education, only around 90 can boast of imparting education of
excellent quality.
MANAGEMENT EDUCATION SCENARIO IN INDIA
The management education scene is majorly characterised by a large number of „freshers‟ (students with little or
no work experience) seeking admission to the top institutes in the country. This is in sharp contrast to the scene
abroad where a high percentage of those wishing to pursue management education have at least a few years of
work experience. This has resulted in the average age of a management graduate in India being about 22-23
years in India compared to the 28-29 years at most top class institutes abroad. However, it should be noted that
about 15-20 institutes in India are able to attract candidates with around 2-3 years of work experience while the
rest attract only fresh graduates.
So far, it has been observed that about 30-40% of the candidates who get into top management institutes in India
have prior work experience of one year or more. But, of late, there has been a shift in the pattern of admission at
some of India‟s best management institutes. Currently, it appears that some top management institutes are taking
in a higher proportion of candidates who have more than a year‟s experience, where “work experience”, in most
cases, is defined as “full-time, paid, work experience after completing graduation”.
The fee charged by management institutes in India varies a great deal between institutes. It is as little as 20,000
for a two-year post-graduate programme in university departments which are funded by the government while
most premier institutes charge anywhere between 4 lakh and 12 lakh for a similar programme.
Three-Year Part-Time Programme
This programme is primarily meant for working professionals who cannot pursue a full-time programme. Many
of the institutes offering the two-year full-time programme also offer this programme for working professionals.
As the focus is on working professionals, the eligibility criteria for this programme calls for a certain amount of
work experience (usually two years). In most cases, the candidates who aim to pursue this kind of a programme
are required to write the same entrance test as for the regular two-year full-time programme. XLRI, Jamshedpur,
and IIM-Calcutta are two of the better-known institutes that offer this type of programm