Judged on parameters like research and thought leadership, they may not meet world standards, but discussions on whether the ‘tag’ is deserved are pointless because it ignores the real issues at hand.
CEO, Banner Global Consulting
For years the IIM faculty has been bled of their best and most experienced members through retirement, attrition or dilution (for staffing newer IIMs)
A question like this doesn’t have a simple “yes” or “no” answer but, if one is forced, there is no doubt it has to be answered in the negative — even at the risk of alienating some of my close friends at the IIMs.
Perhaps the debate arises because we have been immunised to the tag “world-class” by copywriters who sprinkle the word as liberally as ajinomoto is in a Chinese takeaway. If we accept the definition of world-class as “being of the highest calibre in the world”, we should start with some global ratings of MBA institutes. I picked three well-respected surveys and found that, out of the 10 IIMs that now exist, only one (IIM-A) appears in the Financial Times as well as The Economist ranking of 100 best MBA institutes and only two (IIM-A and IIM-B) appear in Business Week’s list of non-US MBA schools — both in the “Not considered for ranking” class.
It might be argued that aggregate ratings like these don’t only reflect on the faculty. But that argument can cut both ways. Perhaps even the institutes that make it to the lists owe their entry more to the super-intelligent students they attract, the opportunity these exceptionally smart individuals are provided to interact competitively with each other as well as with industry and a well-oiled system and syllabus designed by educationists and professors, who pioneered and built these institutes, rather than the existing faculty.
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Can we try picking more direct tests for judging the faculty quality and, in particular, its contribution to research and management thought-leadership? We were all very thrilled when four Indians appeared in a much publicised list of the World’s 10 Top Management Gurus a while ago. Two of them (C K Prahalad and Vijay Govindrajan) even taught at an IIM. Unfortunately, that was more that 30 years ago. Though statistics are not readily to hand, I suspect if we were to trace institute-of-author for seminal books on management, the share garnered by the current faculty at the IIMs may be equally meagre.
This was not always the case. When there were just three IIMs, professors of the stature of Vasant Mote, Pradip Khandwalla and Udai Pareek (I limit myself to mentioning just three because there is a word-limit on this article) could hold their own in any global sweepstake. But that was then. For years the faculty at the IIMs has been bled of their best and most experienced members through retirement, attrition or dilution (for staffing newer IIMs). Given the war for talent in India, the IIMs haven’t had the resources to recruit or the time to groom as sparkling a constellation as they have lost. This is not to say there is just no one of international stature available among the faculty today. The true question is: how many such stellar teachers and thinkers do we now have to spread over 10 IIMs? Consequently, how frequently does an average student benefit from their presence?
The foregoing should not be automatically construed as a denigration of the effort or innate quality of the current faculty at the IIMs. There are many reasons the IIM faculty is in its present parlous state and most of them are not of the faculty’s doing. In the past few days, I have heard several apologists for the faculty at the IIMs on the televisison, who have put the blame on paucity of resources, lack of autonomy and the government’s handling of the institutes. If these analyses direct us to seek solutions, I am all for them, but I find they are often self-contradictorily trotted out by speakers who first deny that any faculty problem exists for the IIMs and then go on to justify how such problems are inevitable under the current ruling dispensation.
Unless we accept the fact that we are not already world-class, we risk remaining complacent in our belief that our emperor institutes are attired in the best of faculty whereas we are actually down to our professorial “inner wear” on a global standard. The bee’s nest stirred by Jairam Ramesh has the potential to yield a store of honey if we shoo away the angry drones and focus on removing the impediments to making IIM faculty world-class.
Faculty member, IIM-A
It would be more appropriate to ask whether the IITs and IIMs have enough people joining academia within India. If not, how can we have world-class faculty?
The debate on remarks made by the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on the quality of IITs and IIMs and their research output is, to an extent, pointless.
The minister’s comment is neither terribly original nor does it add insight to what has been voiced by his colleagues on either side of the political divide. Most insiders (read faculty) at IITs and IIMs are not insane enough to claim that these institutions are “world-class” in the sense that they are doing cutting-edge research or are unmatched by other institutions in the world.
This kind of comment has been often used to berate institutions and soften them up for whatever the political masters have in mind. Insiders dread these attempts to fix all kinds of problems, including the lack of “world-class” institutions in India. After all, they have already made India “world-class” in every other dimension!
The popular “world-class” perception of students is derived from the fact that global firms hire IIT and IIM students and that some of these students have become successful entrepreneurs or managers within and outside India. The fact that some of them later studied at “world-class” institutions abroad corroborates this hypothesis. There are no such widely reported achievements of the faculty at IITs and IIMs.
The problem with the popular superlative-based classifications (world-class, excellent and so on) and judgments is that they ignore statistical odds, are based on what is reported in the media and fail to raise meaningful questions.
There is a difference between becoming a world-class plumber, electrician or a manager and becoming a world-class physicist, biologist, historian, musician, actor and so on — professions that are much more competitive and in which the odds are low for anyone to be called world-class. In some cases, the term “world-class” has no meaning.
How do you define Jane Goodall, who spent almost her entire lifetime studying chimpanzees? Is she “world-class” and if so, in what? Or, do we expect only those who are interested in general and abstract issues to be world-class like Einstein, Ramanujan or Darwin?
The second problem with this type of classification is that it confuses “unit of analysis”. What is “world-class”? The faculty or the institution? Is there any empirical (not logical) connection between the two? In reality, world-class academic institutions, or for that matter, football clubs, compete with each other to get the best academics and soccer players, respectively. If they succeed, they also end up attracting world-class academicians and players.
It would be possibly more appropriate to ask whether the IITs and IIMs have enough people joining academia within India. If that is not happening, how can we have world-class faculty in India? Another relevant question would be whether Indian institutions can attract or retain such world-class academics and if not, then what needs to be done. The IITs and IIMs will not become better by competing with each other or by the entry of private institutions without competing for the key resources, that is, potential world-class faculty members. If the basic ingredients are missing, are we going to build large-scale systems or institutions by relying on individual brilliance or do we want a competitive space in which excellence is sought by a large number of aspirants?
One intervention in the direction of making these institutions “world-class” in the recent past has been to open more of them without bothering about infrastructure or faculty. Ramesh is right about IITs/IIMs, but he is even more correct about some of the new IITs/IIMs because they neither have faculty nor a track-record to speak of. Another interesting intervention to make them “world-class” has been to expect the established IIMs to be self-sufficient by generating enough revenue through programme fees, consulting and training income. These revenues should not only support institute expenses but also PhD programme students and their own research. Nonetheless, the faculty is expected to not only do more research but be accountable for the quantity and quality of research!