Government clears way for IIMs to extend reach overseas

India's prestigious centres of management education, the IIMs will soon be allowed to open branches abroad, hike the salaries of their faculty members, and reduce the number of governors on their boards to make them more manageable.
 
According to analysts these steps are welcome and much overdue, but in return greater accountability is being sought from the institutes which have agreed to prepare key action plans and performance indicators to monitor their progress.
 
They add that though the development is positive, there is a bigger need to provide the IIMs and other premier institutes complete autonomy which could mean the right to expand or shrink as also to raise fees and/or invite foreign faculty, students and so on.
 
They point out that IIMs or at least the more established of the institutes are among the top of India's education brands, but somehow they do not seem to stack up very high globally. They say even the premier IIM, Ahmedabad is no exception to this.
 
According to analysts the reason for this is the institutes are forced to remain mere factories for churning out management graduates.
 
Given this state of affairs, it is not surprising that there is little, if any top-class research originating from the institutes.
 
The IIMs cannot be blamed for this, they say, rather it is the socio-cultural milieu which places a high premium on high paying jobs rather than on intellectual output that should be blamed.
 
Concerns have also been expressed over the dilution of the IIM brand with the government seeking to further the reach of management education across the country into the hinterland.

To this end the government plans to open six more IIMs in addition to the existing seven, but it will have to contend with the risk of dilution of the brand as the quality of education imparted at the new institutes might not be quite up to the mark associated with the IIMs.
 
But they point out that the stark reality of any institution of enterprise run by the government is that the sheen wears off over a period of time as standards inevitably fall and excellence gives way to mediocrity. That is exactly what happened with Air India which was one of the finest run airlines under the Tatas but which now mostly makes news for all the wrong reasons.
 
Meanwhile, it is learnt that the demand of the institutes for waiver of service tax on executive education programmes has also been approved.
 
The go ahead was given on the basis of three reports on a new governance structure (chaired by R C Bhargav, chairman BOG, IIM, Ranchi), on faculty and research at IIMs (chaired by Ajit Balakrishnan, chairman, IIM-Calcutta) and the third one on fundraising by IIMs (chaired by Hari S Bhatia, chairman of IIM, Raipur.

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