IIM Ahmedabad: Compulsory courses replace electives; curriculum revamped to promote Make in India

Much earlier than the visit of Mr Prakash Javadekar, Minister of HRD to its campus on September 16, IIM Ahmedabad had revamped its curriculum by introducing compulsory courses in place of electives. The decision was taken by the Review Committee at IIM Ahmedabad after consulting all stake holders which included detailed interviews with students, alumni, corporates, faculty at IIMA and other B schools.

To promote and inculcate more Indian entrepreneurship culture among its students, IIM Ahmedabad has done away with a few of its traditional electives in flagship Post Graduate Programme (PGP) and has replaced them with such curriculum that could bring the Make in India vision a reality.

The revamped curriculum will help a good percentage of students after completion of their management programme switching to entrepreneurship ventures than joining a company while some of the pass outs might prefer to go to foreign countries to shape their future.

Traditional courses cut
IIM Ahmedabad has cut back on traditional programmes like finance, operations and marketing as the strategy to revamp the curriculum of its management programme.
More focus on human resources will make the PGP programme more inclined towards Make in India. The changes aim to make the programme more innovative to enable the students to open up their thinking capacity.

5 Compulsory courses
For the first year PGP students, IIM Ahmedabad now offers 5 compulsory courses instead of electives. PGP students now have to go for
-- Entrepreneurship programme;
-- Environment sustainability;
-- Design thinking;
-- Managing global organizations;
-- Government Systems and processes
This will bring about management expertise to manage problems the indigenous way and will encourage PGP students to focus more on exploring entrepreneurship opportunities instead of moving out of the country.

2 courses already started
IIM Ahmedabad began with 2 compulsory courses as they are the most preferred ones to accelerate the vision of Make in India to take shape. The first one is Entrepreneurship and other one is Design thinking.
More candidates with work experience are now coming to IIM Ahmedabad to pursue management courses. Their endeavour is to go for entrepreneurship after getting the due work experience and management skills. The 2014-16 batch of PGP has 63.2% students with work experience. This ratio was increased in 2015-17 batch to 64.6%. Another key step that IIM Ahmedabad has taken is introducing the deferred admissions scheme. Through deferred admissions scheme, selected candidates with no or less than 3 years of prior work experience will have assured seats. Accordingly, the candidates will get encouraged to get work experience before coming back to join.

Till last year courses on entrepreneurship and designing were elective. IIM Ahmedabad is giving more focus on entrepreneurship by making Entrepreneurship as well as Design thinking as compulsory courses. In view of Prof Raghuram Management student should also know the products and process which are included in Design thinking.