Death by degree

The human resources development ministry’s draft Indian Institutes of Management Bill, 2015 has been rightly pilloried by those concerned about preserving one of the few centres of excellence that India possesses in the field of higher education. Under the guise of ostensibly enshrining the IIMs as “institutions of national importance”, and empowering the IIMs to grant degrees to their graduates instead of the postgraduate diplomas they currently confer, the draft Bill has strayed far from this purpose. As it stands, the provisions of the Bill strike at the academic and operational autonomy of the principal IIMs — the key to the creation of their global brand equity. The problem does not lie with either of these two stated objectives. Formal government recognition will only underscore what the public at large, millions of aspiring students and global hirers of talent already know — that the IIMs are indeed jewels in the crown of Indian higher education. The lack of a university degree has never been an impediment to IIM graduates getting prime jobs all over the world. Nor indeed has it been a barrier to those who have wished to pursue higher academic research; indeed, some of the current directors of IIMs are themselves IIM fellow. Neither the government nor other universities, at home and abroad, have had an issue recognising the IIMs’ fellow programme as equivalent to a university PhD.

The problem arises with the provisions that the draft innocuously describes as “certain other matters connected with such institutions or incidental thereto”. These will remove the independence of the Board of Governors of the IIMs — which feature stalwarts of industry and global experts in many fields at present — as well that of the directors of IIMs; it will convert them, instead, to mere rubber stamps. The real decision-making power will be transferred to officials of the ministry, who have neither the skill nor the experience to sit in judgment over academic matters. The draft is also worryingly vague about the process to be followed, like, for instance, in the appointment of directors, for which the power has been vested with the Centre.

The premier IIMs have earned financial independence from the Centre by building up a reputation for excellence, which has resulted in industry support and liberal grants and endowments from grateful alumni. In fact, they are among the most successful examples of public-private partnership one can find in this country. The newer IIMs admittedly need government support — but converting them to a fiefdom for babus will be too high a price to pay for this. Instead, the focus should be on developing clearer accountability for recipients of public funding, and unambiguous metrics to measure this. Rather than trying to fix what isn’t broken, the Centre is better advised to focus on developing basic education and skill development, so that the nation can actually reap the benefits of its enormous demographic dividend.

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