Fee hike, entrepreneurship push on IIMs' top agenda in 2015

MUMBAI: With six new Institutes of Management (IIMs) set to start operations from the forthcoming session, 2015 will be a big year for the country’s premier management institutions. The older lot have been making efforts to emerge as brands to reckon with in India and internationally, while the more recent entrants have been trying to come into their own. A greater focus on diversity, research and entrepreneurship as well as more fee hikes are what we are likely to see this year.
Fee hikes

MBA students across the country can brace themselves for another round of fee hikes at some of India’s top business schools as the hiring scenario improves and pay packages go up. IIM Ahmedabad hiked the fee for its flagship PGP programme from Rs 16.6 lakh to Rs 18.5 lakh from the 2015-17 session. The PGPX course fee is also being raised to Rs 24 lakh from Rs 21.5 lakh.

Among those likely to follow suit are IIM Bangalore, which like its Ahmedabad counterpart, hasn’t raised its course fees in two years. A decision on this will only be taken after its board meeting in early January, says an institute spokesperson. Other institutes which could consider a fee hike include IIM Indore, IIM Lucknow and IIM Tiruchirapalli, though sources declined to comment. “We haven’t raised our fee hikes since our inception but any decision will only be taken after our board meeting in March, said IIM Trichy director Prafulla Agnihotri. “Right now we are evaluating our cost structure.”

However, institutes such as IIM Calcutta, which raised its fees in the 2014-16 session, are unlikely to go in for another revision.

Focus on Research

The leading business schools plan to focus on research and encourage more professors to publish papers in top journals. The quantity and quality of papers will push their ranking among global B-schools many notches higher.

This December, IIM Ahmedabad announced it has raised .`20 crore from corporate tie-ups and will spend it on research in financial markets, infrastructure and entrepreneurship. Among the newer lot, IIM Trichy ensured most of its professors published papers in topranking journals. The college also reportedly sends two professors every year to Harvard, and others are expected to follow suit.

In October, IIM-B started a programme wherein faculty members have to develop research in their country of focus to build domain expertise. Japan, China, Dubai and Singapore have been identified so far. “IIM Bangalore has a threepronged strategy with a focus on research and publications, internationalisation and innovation and entrepreneurship in its quest to become a management school recognised globally for excellence in research and teaching programmes,” says Devanath Tirupati, dean academic.

The college has established the Centre for Financial Markets to support interdisciplinary empirical research using data on Indian and other emerging markets. “The vision of this initiative is to be India’s most comprehensive research data source,” adds Tirupati.
Entrepreneurship push

The top B-schools in India will line up more initiatives to churn out job creators besides just managers. Over the past few years, most established IIMs have formed incubation centres where the students are funded by the college. There are also corporate tieups, and alumni provide mentorship to come up with the next big game changer.

In 2014, the Tata Group started Tata Social Enterprise Challenge along with IIM Calcutta to find some of the most promising earlystage start-ups. The new year will see more such alliances between Corporate India and the IIMs.

IIM Raipur, which falls into the newer category, will start an initiative called ‘Enactus Social Entrepreneurship’. The project, whichwill last for a year-and-ahalf per batch, involves students taking up a live social problem and attempting to solve it through social entrepreneurship.

Amember of the Consultancy and Entrepreneurship Club of IIM Raipur says the institute is also planning an incubation centre, and mentorship will be provided by external consultants, alumni and professors of IIM Bangalore among others.

Start-ups and e-commerce have emerged as the top recruiters at Bschools. Their competitive salaries, varied profiles, options of heading business units and fast career growth have made their founders poster boys at management colleges.

The boom in this sector has pushed companies to allow start-up ideas and to feed this frenzy.

In keeping with the sentiment, IIMs will boost their initiatives to encourage entrepreneurs in 2015.

In 2014, more than 20 students from six older IIMs refused to sit for placements and chose to concentrate instead on their ventures. These numbers are expected to shoot up in this year, and there will be dropouts from the newer IIMs as well.

Deferred placements — which allows students to return to campus and sit for placements in the next couple of years in case their venture fails — will see wider acceptance among all the IIMs.

IIM Udaipur in December 2014, announced a monthly stipend Rs 20,000 to students who are working on a business model and have opted for deferred placements.

The established IIMs will continue to provide working space in their incubation centres and mentoring on start-ups to their students.

Focus on diversity

IIMs have steadily been trying to shore up their focus on diversity over the last few years, and this year, the efforts are only likely to pick up momentum.

It’s not just gender diversity that is being looked at; but also trying to get in a greater representation of non-engineers, students with more experience and even international students. All this is aimed at having a richer, more diverse classroom.

From the next session, for instance, IIM Ahmedabad is introducing deferred admissions — for freshers to come back with more experience — as well as the ‘supernumerary quota’ to admit more international students.
With the Common Admission Test results out and IIMs soon to send out letters to MBA aspirants, expect to see the ranks of MBA classes swelling, with more women and students from different streams than before.

There will also be greater efforts to get in foreign faculty, besides people from industry as visiting faculty.

“We will try to take advantage our location to try and get in a many industry leaders as possible so our students can get the benefit of their knowledge,” says Gautam Sinha, director, IIM Kashipur.