Indian Institute of Management Calcutta wins accreditation from AACSB

MUMBAI: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C) has become the first IIM in the country to receive accreditation from Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International. With this, India’s oldest IIM joins an elite group of global institutes that have received this accreditation — considered the gold standard in business education — and earned by less than 5 per cent of the world’s business programmes.

Only two Indian B-schools – ISB and TAPMI – already have this accreditation. In March, IIM Calcutta also bagged a global accreditation status from the Association of MBAs (AMBA) for its PGPEX (MBA) and PGP (MBM) programmes for five years. Now it becomes the only B-school in India with both the AACSB and AMBA accreditations.

“This is a big step in our journey towards internationalisation,” Saibal Chattopadhyay, director, IIM Calcutta told ET. Benchmarking IIM-C against the best in the world will not only further the institute’s global ambitions but also help it tie up with betterknown international counterparts for offering new/dual programmes, carrying out student and faculty exchanges and promote better research. “All this will be possible on a much larger scale than what we are doing now,” said Chattopadhyay.

Achieving AACSB accreditation is a process of rigorous internal review and can take many years to complete. “AACSB evaluated us according to 19 parameters. Above all, they judge whether the work we are doing is aligned to our overall mission and vision statement,” said Chattopadhyay. All accredited schools must go through a peer review process every five years in order to retain their accreditation.