In the MBAUniverse.com Poll conducted from February 22 to 27 it has been revealed that India’s management education community is not much happy with the fast-paced expansion of the IIMs. To the question: Will the ad-hoc expansion of IIMs lead to damage of Brand IIM?, 52% of respondents agree that the fast-track expansion will damage the name of IIMs. 48% of the 50 respondents don’t agree.

The new IIMs are planned in Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Haryana. Each new IIM will offer 120 seats to start with. The six existing IIMs together admit 1,600 students now.

On February 26 Finance Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee increased the money for setting up the new IIMs in Budget 2010-11. The money set aside for new IIMs has been raised from Rs 3 crore (Rs 30 million) in 2009-10 to Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) in 2010-11.

While the government is serious on the further expansion of IIMs, the method and the planning of the expansion has worried the academicians, as well as the MBA aspirants. Although the new IIMs have got mentors in the existing IIMs, the things are not rosy. Most of the new IIMs are coming up in temporary premises and probably they will be run by temporary inexperienced faculty members.

The first of the new IIMs is most likely to be IIM Ranchi, which is being mentored by IIM Calcutta. IIM-C has already announced that the first session will begin this year. It looks like a highly premature announcement as none of the things are in place yet.

All this will surely have an impact on the brand IIM. It is known that the existing IIMs face the crunch of good faculty members. How will the HRD Ministry provide good faculty members in large numbers to the new IIMs? It is a question that Mr. Sibal should immediately answer.

 Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more Poll Surveys!