Indra’s Drishtikona (Viewpoint)

IIMs Story - Something Strange.

Posted : June 24, 2004 at 11:37 pm [IST]

In my Presidency College days (1955-57), a general strike on 10-paise rise in bus or tram fare was quite common. Even in Delhi, housewives reacted sharply to increases in school bus fare or tuition fee only a year ago. Recently the new government has hesitatingly increased the price of cooking gas, diesel and petrol. As shown on TV channels, communist party that supports the government wants a roll back of cooking gas price. Mamtadi in Kolkata declares the price increase of diesel as anti-farmers as they are the ones who use diesel in tractors. The increase on cooking gas is Rs. 20 per cylinder. Even if the cylinder lasts for 20 days in a small family of 4, it comes to only Re 1 per day. Can there no saving in some other areas? A cinema ticket in a multiplex costs Rs. 150. But why does no one say anything about petrol price? In ’90s, the automobile manufacturers used to raise a hell in case of petrol price rise. They had their argument about loss of sales because of that. Cars were luxury items as per government in those days. But today self-owned car has become a necessity. Many households are having more than one. One can not think of going to office or to even shopping or temple without it. But no one even murmurs about the rise in petrol price. But they all know that every one in every party is busy now in doing something for their vote bank. The section has removed quite a functional government very recently. They will do the same next time if some thing is not done for them.

But again, my main contention is something different at this moment. I want to attract attention of all reasonable persons to IIM fee reduction issue. Why was the significant fee reduction from Rs.1.5 lakh to Rs. 30,000 per annum so vehemently opposed even by the students? I do not know but I have not read any parent of the students of IIMs also making any comments any favour of the proposal. I am sure if my children would have been in IIMs today I would have welcomed the fee reduction whole heartedly. Perhaps as someone told me the idea was not bad but the adamancy with which one individual minister wanted to get that accepted was very repulsive. Perhaps some of the members of the student community went to his constituency to see that he does not get elected.
I am personally against this high a fee, though the market value of the passing out graduates is good. It is also nice that presently the students are hardly worried and so are the parents. They go for loans that the banks are offering at low interest and easy terms. Though now I hear some of them have failed to pay back their loans to their banks. It will chill the bankers. But my worry is also about something else. A small and medium manufacturing sector unit will not be able to afford that high a salary that is being offered to the passing out graduates by MNCs. Does that mean their services and their intelligence will not be available for the sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture which must grow to take the country ahead in groups of developed countries? Does it mean that IIMs will be an elitist institutes meant to serve MNCs or very big companies only and the rest will have to be content with graduates from the colleges lower in rankings?
I am still of opinion that the fee of regular courses should remain low so that the parents can afford it even if they have more than two children attending higher professional courses at the same time.
” IIMs must also conduct some cheap short time courses for smaller companies but with same faculties and with the same quality of instructions.
” IIMs must provide business consultations to small and medium scale industries at affordable fees.
” IIMs and other high ranked management schools must devote more of their resources on research on and for the Indian management in global context.
” Teachers there must publish world class papers and also aim for patents for some world class products with all the autonomy assured, if that was only thing in shortage earlier..
” These institutes of national importance must really become a globally sought after locations.
” Teachers in IIMs are earning huge consultancy fees based on their connections with the IIMs. How far is it justified? Is that coming at cost of quality of teaching or research work that should be the priority? Or is the autonomy that they were asking for?

Battle is over. Commander has gone. New commander has left it to the soldiers to rule the way they want. Fees will remain the same as it was last year. The idea of one common entrance examination has been dropped. IIMs can remain the elitists’ institutions. Students have now bigger scholarship fund to look at. But they must have parents with annual income up to Rs.2 lakh per annum and not more to become eligible for scholarships. I still can not understand why the students went against fee reduction. Did they want to keep themselves identified with those branded institutions? An institution can have better brand image with higher tuition fee only, like higher specialist doctors’ fee that only rich persons can afford.

I have one another request for IIMs. In my opinion which is also of some more professionals, IIMs must admit at least engineers with some years of experience. It is really derogatory for IITs that their students after specializing in engineering move to get an specialization in finance from IIMs. If engineering degrees are just equivalent to one of the many graduate course degrees, what is the fun of spending so much of resources in engineering education? There are some flaws some where and that must be corrected.

- Indra

Category: Industry/Management |