B-schools outline plan for 2007-08

Indian management schools are all set to rein in their new academic year this June.

At the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi and Kolkata, the institute has decided to review the structure of its course. It is getting two faculty members from Paris for its courses in International planning management and marketing of services.

Also, this year on, the institute will do away with the supplementary examination for regular management students. The part-time management programme students however, will be allowed to take supplementary exams. The new batch will start on July 2.

At the Xavier's Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar, the fresh batch will start on June 15. The institute has got an All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approval to all its programmes and has thus decided to roll out new courses in econometrics, financial modelling and regulatory finance.

The institute will also start fresh courses in executive development programme through satellite training.

"This academic year is significant to us as we got all our programmes approved by AICTE. We will be rolling out many more courses and will also be recruiting new faculty members this year," said Brijraj Mohanty, acting dean, XIM-B. XIM-B is also looking for a new campus in Orissa.

At IIM-Ahmedabad, which received close to 170,000 applications, offer letters have been issued and final acceptances are under process.

The institute will be drawing up a temporaray final batch list who will be invited to join the institute on June 21 which is IIM Kozhikode's registration date as well. Students who drop out on that date will then be replaced by students in the shortlist.

Admissions at the IIMs got delayed this year on account of the proposed other backward caste (OBC) quota which had led to the HRD ministry sending a directive to the IIMs not to release the final lists on April 12.

Later the Supreme Court refused to vacate the stay on 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in elite educational institutions which finally led the IIMs to release the final lists on April 28 without reservations.

The preparatory programme for economically weaker students held by the IIMs every year has had to be shortened from the stipulated two weeks to a week or 10 days this year.

Most institutes are looking at the registration dates as the day when they will be able to compile the final batch of students since seats are blocked by students who get multiple acceptances from the IIMs.

"A small number of students get multiple acceptances from the IIMs and majority among them prefer the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta. We have set the registration date for IIM-Indore on June 28 and have already released two waiting lists," said Neeraj Dwivedi, Chairperson, Admissions, IIM-Indore.

The batch profile at most of the institutes has not been drawn up yet since the final list would be clear only after the registration date. But most admission officials say the trend will remain more or less the same.

In most of the IIMs, students with an engineering background make up close to 70 per cent of the class and around 40-45 per cent do not have any previous work experience.

However, at IIM-Indore, it is expected that the incoming batch would have more work experience than the last year's batch where 55 per cent of the selected students did not have work experience.

IIM-A has drawn up a review committee for its post-graduate programme after a decade which consists of close to eight faculty members. The review committee would analyse the course modules and electives with feedback from other faculty members, students and recruiters.

Since the committee would be presenting its report towards the end of 2007, the academic session beginning from next month would not see any major changes in curriculum although the instititute says it is open to requested electives.

IIM-Bangalore, on the other hand, will be making changes to their curriculum by introducing some more topics in the syllabus.

"The changes are being made internally by the faculty based on last year's experiences," an IIMB spokesperson said.

The institute also said they will be increasing the faculty from 75 to 80 this year. However, no changes are being made to the physical infrastructure. To make the outstation students more comfortable, IIM-B gives the students an official tour of the city.