B-Schools may soon have common placement reporting norms

Various MBA schools and stakeholders plan to meet in June to discuss reporting standards and make them more transparent, as proposed by IIM-Ahmedabad in October last year. This is because more and more aspirants are relying on these reports to make their choices.

“The exact date of the meeting will be announced in the first week of May, after which we will be inviting all stakeholders, including B-schools, companies, alumni, placement chairpersons of the other IIMs and the media to share our experience and take forward the process of finalising the placement reporting standards,” said Prof Saral Mukherjee, faculty and head of the placement committee at IIM-A.

Institutes that agree to the final draft of the reporting standards would become signatories and have their reports audited by an external auditor, Prof Mukherjee told Business Line .

A first draft of the reporting standards had been put on the IIM-A Web site. Based on the feedback, the format would be fine-tuned, he said.

IIM-A is in the process of collecting data of the recently concluded placement process. A report of this in a new format would soon be released, he said, and added that most recruiters had co-operated and submitted their reports.

The focus of the new format would be on aggregate statistics rather than personalised data to protect the privacy of students. The report will work at two levels – one when recruiters give offers to students, and two, when the institute shares data with the media.

This is to ensure that no false or misleading information is spread and a true picture emerges. At present, there is no comparable basis for offers. While one recruiter includes meals, car allowance, bonus and a one-time payment in the cost to company, another may not do so. In such a scenario, the student finds it difficult to make a choice, Prof Mukherjee said.

“Though there have been no voices of dissent, doubts had been expressed when the idea was first proposed,” he said.

Smaller B-schools worried whether all recruiters would willingly give the institutes the reports in the particular format.

IIM-A hopes that its bigger bargaining power with the industry than smaller B-schools and by implementing the system first, it will successfully acclimatise the recruiters with the process.

All India Institute of Management President, Mr Gautam Thapar, feels it is a good idea to have commonly accepted placement reporting standards, as they ensure transparency and fairness in the competition among B-schools.

“The largest B-Schools in the US, such as Harvard, Wharton, Stanford and Sloan, have already adopted common standards in placement reporting,” he said.

Often, the placement information is selective, even opportunistic. Random placement reporting also leads to erroneous ranking of B-Schools by market researchers and media, he said.

COMMENT NOW