As reported, ‘for the second year in a row, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad has been the only Indian management institute that has made it to the

‘Financial Times Global MBA Ranking’ of the top 100 B-schools across the world’. ISB bettered its ranks and moved to 15th this year from No 20 last year. The top three slots are occupied by the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton; the London Business School and the Harvard Business School.

ISB may be the costliest business school in India with a fee of Rs 20 lakh for the one year programme. ISB has increased its intake numbers really fast. While in 2001, its first batch, 126 students graduated, the number will be 440 for 2009 increasing to 560 in 2010. It will soon start a new campus in Mohali.

Surprisingly, none of the IIMs make into the Financial Times Global MBA ranking. According to one of the faculty of one IIM, it is because the Financial Times rankings only considered executive MBA programmes where the students admitted to the programmes had work experience. IIMs admit freshers and have begun the Postgraduate- Diploma courses for executives only recently.

I have been one who all over these been writing again the MBA courses for freshers. MBA is basically an application based education. The student must have working experience as prerequisite for admission. Unfortunately, IIMs don’t have the autonomy, the resources and perhaps the incentive required for getting into the list of the best B-schools of the world. With recent increase in the remunerations, the salary of the faculty may become respectable. However, it will hardly ensure the improvement in research works that adds to the brand value. Why can’t IIMs take up a research work on Satyam Swindle to go into the root cause of the story and to suggest the ways and means to avoid such scams? Going on International issues, will IIMs take research work on the recent US melt down that has been caused by the crooked minds of some top executives and is making the whole world suffer today?

For ISB, I have a request if it can publish a ‘Harvard Business Review‘ type magazine for the industry and the people interested in keeping themselves updated with the art and science of management.