The Hindu Business Line : IIMs: The global (dis)connect?

SHOULD the India Institutes of Management go global? The question has been raised in view of IIM-B wanting to open a campus in Singapore. The debate has implications not just for the IIMs but also for other educational institutes (such as the IITs) that may have global ambitions. The Education Ministry thinks that IIMs should first set up more campuses within India before going global. What are the major arguments against IIMs going global?

First, the huge gap between the supply of management graduates coming out of IIMs and the demand for them in industry and society at large.

The IIMs, it is felt, should increase their intake and set up more campuses within India, especially in backward States/regions such as Bihar or North-East. The IIMs can go global only after the excess-demand situation for managers in India is taken care of.

Second, their public responsibility. The IIMs were set up with public money. So, their first and foremost responsibility is to meet the demands in India. Third, creating a manager pool. The IIMs should train managers not just for the private corporates but also for the public sector units and many other under-managed social activities. That should be the priority; not producing more managers for high-paying MNCs in India and, now, in other countries.

Fourth, are the IIMs really ready to face international competition? Let us examine the validity of these arguments. There is, no doubt, a huge demand-supply gap with respect to IIM graduates. But this is not true for all management graduates in India. There are hundreds of AICTE-approved management institutes which are bringing to the market thousands of graduates every year. Some do not even get jobs, while a graduate from the IIMs (and a few other top-rated institutes), typically, gets multiple job offers. So,) the basic problem is not quantity but quality of graduates being produced.

Two new IIMs have recently been set up and another is to be launched soon. The newer IIMs are finding it difficult to recruit and retain high quality faculty. The constraint on taking in more students in the IIMs is due to the shortage of faculty in some critical areas and not physical infrastructure. Some of the IIMs do have enough funds to augment physical infrastructure, but the shortage of quality faculty cannot be so easily rectified. Not that teaching posts cannot be filled up. There are hundreds of applicants for faculty positions at IIMs but most of them are not up to the standard. The faculty for the functional areas (such as finance, marketing, HR) has to compete with the private sector, which offers higher pay. Unless the salary structure of IIMs, at least in the critical areas, closely matches what is offered by the private sector and some private management institutes, the shortage of quality faculty at IIMs would continue. So, expanding the IIMs, while maintaining the quality of education, is not easy.

Given this shortage, spreading faculty resources over more locations may be counter-productive. But, then, one may ask: What is the justification for setting up shop in Singapore? Is it not going to spread out resources even more thinly, affecting the quality of teaching in India?

One possible answer to this question is that the faculty at the Singapore campus need not solely consist of Indian IIM professors. Faculty from other foreign institutes (many of them are already in Singapore as it is emerging as a global education hub, at least for Asia) can teach and do research along with their Indian counterparts. In fact, some of the foreign faculty can also be induced to teach temporarily at IIMs located in India. Such exchanges usually do not take place unless direct interaction and contacts are built up over a period of time through joint teaching and research programmes. Going global would facilitate this process. By rotating the faculty in batches, many more IIM teachers from India would be exposed to the more challenging academic environment abroad.

Otherwise, IIMs may be content with the (untested) belief that they are among the best in the world. If the IIMs and the IITs succeed in building Brand India in education abroad, other Indian institutes too will benefit. Moreover, the quality of goods often improves only after the producers face more global competition. Once the quality of faculty improves as result of more interaction with world-class faculty abroad, the quality of the teaching programmes in India would go up. Today, for example, many Indian professors teach international business policy and strategy from Harvard case studies without going abroad or being directly exposed to the international business environment. There is no substitute for learning through direct contact. Setting up shop and undertaking teaching, training and research programmes (to start with, short-term training programmes) abroad may force them to learn.

Indirectly, the biggest beneficiary would be the Indian students as the curriculum and quality of faculty will improve.

Who will take care of the under-managed sectors in India?

IIMs cannot train post-masters or panchayat pradhans. This will have to be undertaken by specialised institutes with tailor-made curriculum.

For good reason there are IITs and polytechnics. Same should be the case with management education. Of course, the IIMs can extend their reach by training the trainers of such other management institutes through courses conducted at IIM campuses. Some IIMs are already doing this and the effort needs to be strengthened further. There is also scope for spreading education to a large number of students through distant education programmes offered through Internet and lecture cassettes prepared by the IIM faculty.

Moreover, they should undertake more short-term courses for practising managers, especially those not out of IIMs or such reputed institutes.

As for setting up IIMs in Bihar or North-East, nothing bars students from Bihar or the North-East entering IIMs. If they are not able to meet the IIM and IIT standards, it is because of the poor quality of education available at the primary and secondary schools. That problem has to be tackled at the early stages, not by setting up more IIMs and IITs at those locations.

In view of the shortage of quality faculty and the relative unattractiveness of those locations, the quality of teaching in these IIMs is bound to be inferior.

Re-locating quality teachers from the existing IIMs to these new locations may not improve matters. Good teachers/researchers can gain through mutual interaction by staying in one place. No IIM on its own would want to open campuses in backward areas.

Forcing them to do so is unlikely to bring the desired results. If anything, it would reduce the quality of the existing IIMs.

(The author is Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.)

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