The Hindu Business Line : Of IIM fees and salary offers

Ravi Goel sends his daughter to class five in a Mumbai suburban CBSE school. The fees for the child works out to Rs 44,000 a year. But his neighbour, Suresh Mathur, can afford to spend more on his son, also in class five. He sends the boy to a more exclusive place, another Mumbai suburban school that follows the IB (International Baccalaureate) syllabus. Mathur spends almost Rs 1 lakh a year for the boy's school education.

Neither Goel or Mathur are too perturbed about the fees they are paying because, if they were to opt for one of those hill station schools outside Mumbai, the fee would be close to Rs 1.5 lakh an academic year. Both Goel and Mathur are amazed though about the frenzy that is building up over the decision of the Indian Institutes of Management to hike their course fee from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 1.8 lakh or so for a post-graduate programme in business management.

If thousands of students learning medicine and engineering in the country have no issue about paying course fees running up to Rs 25-30 lakh, over four-five years, why should the country debate of the pros and cons of IIM students paying a fraction of that, they reasoned. Explanation along the lines that anything to do with IIMs tends to get media attention these days did not cut much ice with the gentlemen.

Though the annual ritual of finding out and publicising the salary offers made to the IIM students has been religiously followed for many years, it is only in the last few years that placement week has resulted in such media hype, says Goel.

"Are you telling me that the future of less than 1,500 management students from the IIMs is more important than lakhs of graduates from other academic streams who actually go on to play a more integral part of the country's economy," he wanted to know. True, not many would be interested in knowing about a science graduate getting picked up as a scientific assistant in the Indian Space Research Organisation for a salary of Rs 15,000 a month when MNCs are picking up IIM students at Rs 15 lakh a month. Or the salary paid to a National Defence Academy pass-out. Maybe the IITs need to learn from the IIMs a few marketing lessons on how to place its students.

Just as other institutes of national importance, such as the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences and the National Institute of Design, need to. But, then, they also may not want to make a big tamasha of what their students earn.

Surely, it can only be viewed as a blessing that the trend has not grown beyond the campuses of the IIMs. It would indeed have become a bit tiring if all the arts and science colleges, the computer software finishing institutes, and many others were to indulge in the practice of trumpeting what salaries their students got each year.

Vinod Mathew