No short cuts, please

BS OPINION

 The driving force, it seems, is the success of the Calcutta IIM experiment and the huge gap between the demand and the supply of seats in these institutions.

 Last year, 105,000 candidates applied for 1,000 seats in the six IIMs. Over 4 lakh students apply for MBA degrees each year. The story at the IITs is no better: 190,000 candidates applied for 4,400 seats in the seven institutes.

 These numbers certainly favour an expansion of institutions of excellence like the IITs and the IIMs. But it is necessary to pause and ask if setting up branches is the best of way of doing so.

 There are several reasons why the easy option will be counter-productive. First, there is a chance that it would lead to devalued degrees as wells as a caste system of sorts.

 The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, for example, has two branches, including one at Deerborn. Those in the system know what is what.

 Likewise for copy-cat names like, say, the State of University of Michigan at East Lansing or the various universities of California in the state.

 The Oxford degree for the Tokyo branch isn