MBAUniverse.com Analysis: Top MBA schools beat recession, enrolments up by 15-30%

Top MBA schools saw an increase in batch sizes in spite of recession writes Amrita Das from MBAUniverse.com

Whatever with recession! The student batch sizes at the leading MBA schools in India are increasing by the year – whether to keep its pace with the recommendations of the IIM Review Committee, or to supplement the institute’s roadmap for growth. The IIM Review Committee (published on September 25, 2008) recommended the IIMs to focus on increasing the number of student intake in their PGP program to 500 each for IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta; 250 each for IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore and IIM Kozhikode; and 100 students for IIM Shillong by the end of year 2011.

This year, the batch of 2009-2011 commenced at IIM Ahmedabad with 310 students. An IIM Ahmedabad spokesperson, while sharing details with MBAUniverse.com, said, “The batch size this year saw an increase of about 4 per cent in comparison to last year’s 297 students. This year’s batch has 47 female students.” The MBA School also said that 69.70 per cent students of the batch are from the general category. Among the rest, OBC category constitutes 12.26 per cent, SC category constitutes 14.84 per cent, ST category constitutes 3.55 per cent, and physically disabled category constitutes 2.58 per cent of the new IIM Ahmedabad batch. This MBA School is also planning to increase the PGP program seats to around 400 by next year.

IIM Bangalore, too, commenced with the largest-ever batch on June 22 this year. A whopping number of 356 students joined the IIM Bangalore two-year MBA program this year, representing a 30 per cent increase over last year’s intake of 274. While talking to MBAUniverse.com, IIM Bangalore said, “This year university toppers, Olympiad winners, national-level sports players and armed forces officers have joined our institute. CA and CS rank holders, too, joined IIM Bangalore this year. About 50 of the 356 are female students, higher than any previous batch.”

Meanwhile, IIM Calcutta recorded an increase of about 34 per cent in its student batch size this year. “Around 408 students secured seats in IIM Calcutta’s two-year MBA program, in contrast to last year’s 304 students,” IIM Calcutta said. While right now 108 additional students have been provided temporary accommodation inside the campus, the institute is being extensively remodeled to meet the increased load due to quota implementation. The MBA School is also constructing a hostel to accommodate the extra students.

Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM Kozhikode, while speaking to MBAUniverse.com said, “IIM Kozhikode is the fastest growing IIM. Our PGP program has grown five times in the last seven years, which is probably the fastest growth rate in the world for any MBA School! The reason for this increase is equity and access to a large pool of talented young men and women.” This year the IIM Kozhikode batch size increased to 300 from last year’s 260 in spite of recession fears. “We support the government policy to provide equitable access of management education to the underprivileged sections of our society with out compromising on excellence. We also encourage more gender diversity in our student's profile,” the Director of IIM Kozhikode added.

Responding to MBAUniverse.com, Director of IIM Indore, Dr N Ravichandran, said, “Yes, as per the OBC quota recommendations, IIM Indore has been increasing the batch size systematically. Next year the batch size at IIM Indore will be 300 to fulfill the norms of the Government of India.” According to a media report (April 2009), the IIM Lucknow has a batch size of 373, including all the streams. The report said, “Out of 373 seats, 64 seats would go to OBCs as part of the quota implementation.”

At IIM Shillong this year, around 66 students enrolled for the PGP program. Dean (Academics) of IIM Shillong, Dr DK Agarwal, while speaking to MBAUniverse.com about the IIM Review Committee said, “This year there wasn’t any major increase in the student batch size at IIM Shillong. Last year we admitted around 64 and this year we admitted 66 students in our two-year residential MBA program. It’s true that the IIM Review Committee recommended increasing the batch size to 100 by 2011, but we can not go ahead until our infrastructure is in place first.”

Let’s take a look at this year’s increasing batch size trend at just the IIMs.

MBAUniverse.com Analysis: IIM PGP Intake Trend (2 year MBA program)

Source: The current batch size figures are based on inputs provided by IIMs to MBAUniverse.com; and from the IIM Review Committee report 2008.