IIMs to follow ISB with one-year course

Following the success of the one-year post-graduate programme (PGP) for executives introduced four years back by the Indian Business School (ISB), Hyderabad, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are also planning to start a similar course.

This is while continuing with their conventional two-year programme, which is the main course offered by IIMs.

IIM-Ahmedabad (IIMA) was the first one to announce introduction of a full-time residential PGPX from April, 2006 and the institute has already started marketing the course, while IIM-Calcutta (IIMC) has also finalised its plan to introduce PGPX from the next academic year.

It is learnt that even IIM-Bangalore (IIMB) and IIM-Lucknow (IIML) may introduce a one-year full-time PGPX in the next few years.

IIM-A has been working on the idea of doubling its proposed intake from 70 to 140 students in the second academic year, to be started in April, 2007.

IIM-C is expected to start with around 60 seats for the one-year course which, according to sources, would also be hiked during next three-four years to accomodate more students, most of whom would be middle-level managers who could not pursue a management education during their early days.

"Yes, the one-year long full-time PGPX is going to be the new trend as there are strong indications that the country's huge pool of middle-level managers are in need of proper management education from premier B-Schools. While it would ensure more qualified managers for the industries in India, it would also increase India's contribution in managers working abroad while we expect a good number of foreign students to join this course as we are going to market it extensively across the world," Bakul Dholakia, director of IIM-A said here on Monday.

"We believe that the one-year PGP is going to catch up further and we are hiking intake capacity according to the demand from the industry. The graduates have no problem with placement offers and if we consider our lateral placement offers even of last year, those are almost comparable with the major IIMs," said M Rammohan Rao, Dean of ISB, while talking to Business Standard.

IIMA has decided to charge around Rs 8 lakh for the entire course which also includes airconditioned accomodation for the students and their training abroad, ISB, however, charges much higher, almost 100 percent more than the proposed fee structure of IIMA.

ISB charges around Rs 14.5 lakh for the one year course which includes accomodation and in this Rs 14.5 lakh, only fees is of Rs 12.6 lakh as the Institute has decided to hike fees by Rs 60000 from the next academic year.

In ISB, the average age of students is 27 years and they come with an average work experience of five years while for the PGPX to be introduced by IIMA and IIMC from next year, would require atleast seven years of experience.

"Though IIMB has not decided anything concrete about launching PGPX for one year, it has decided to wait and watch as two other IIMs are launching the PGPX next year. IIMB and also IIML may finally introduce such a course in next two to three years time," said a source in the industry.

The director of IIMC, Shekhar Chaudhuri believes that the proposed PGPX would provide scope of management education among the working managers and thus helping the industry further.

"We have constituted a committee to design and then introduce the programme finally," he said.