It seems that increasing the number of seats for their MBA programs is not the only task at the hands of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) anymore! The institutes will also have to boost their faculty now before they can even start thinking of expanding base abroad.
Earlier the Ministry of Human Resource Development had turned down a IIM-B request to open a campus in Singapore. The ministry has said that the MoA (memorandum of association) does not empower the MBA institute to open campuses abroad. But the IIMs have been thinking of establishing their international presence lately.
However, Union Minister of State for Education, D Purandeswari, recently in her speech at the Rajya Sabha presented some hope to the IIMs. She said that opening international campuses may not be "immediately feasible" and said, “Since the IITs and IIMs are facing faculty shortage and have to undertake about 54 per cent expansion in their intake to implement OBC quota, opening campuses abroad may not be possible immediately. Setting up of campuses abroad may further strain thie limited manpower and other resources."
Adressing the Rajya Sabha, Purandeswari further said that the various MoAs of the IIMs will need to be amended because they do not empower the MBA institutes to open campuses abroad. The IIMs may now take this up and work towards increasing their faculty resources at a fast pace. In various interactions with MBAUniverse.com earlier, the deans and directors of the IIMs have already shared on how they are going to expand their student intake for their MBA programs.
Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM Kozikode, while speaking to MBAUniverse.com said, “IIM Kozikode is the fastest growing IIM. Our MBA program has grown five times in the last seven years, which is probably the fastest growth rate in the world for any MBA institute!" The Director of IIM Indore, Dr N Ravichandran, also said, “As per the OBC quota recommendations, IIM Indore has been increasing the batch size systematically. Next year the batch size at our MBA institute will be 300 to fulfill the norms of the Government of India.”
But at IIM Shillong the infrastructure still remains the biggest roadblock in way to expansion. Dean (Academics) of IIM Shillong, Dr DK Agarwal, while speaking to MBAUniverse.com 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.”
Whatever the case, in the coming years the IIMs are poised for massive growth both in India and hopefully even abroad very soon. New IIMs will also come up in locations including Haryana, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, and Tamil Nadu. This will create a large number of faculty being recruited and also an increase in the number of students getting into the prestigious MBA institutes.
