"IIM’s in any case have to increases their intake capacity in the coming years"

Dr. Shekhar Chaudhuri, director of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC) and former president of Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) spoke to Mou Chakraborty on the future of management education in India and about IIMC.

The annual convention of AIMS, which is the body representing all the management institutes of the country was held at your campus last week. What are the areas on which the management institutions will have to work in future?
The most important agenda for all the management institutes in the country will be getting good faculty. With corporate making lucrative offers and the management houses failing to match it, most of the best minds are not joining teaching profession. In next one year one of the most important work of AIMS will be to identify ways to get goof faculty and retain them. The scenario at IIMC too is same, we too will have to chalk out plans to get quality faculty.

What are the other areas of management education in which AIMS decided to give more importance?
Well, the quality of management education has to be improved. And for that the most important thing will be curriculum revision. The curriculum should be updated through industry academia interaction. Another way of doing it could know about the best practices of all other management institutions.

With the opening up of Indian economy many foreign education institutions are coming to India. How would the IIM’s in particular face this challenge?
It is true that soon many well known foreign business schools might show interest in coming to India. And we wont be surprised if business schools like Harvard too wants to set up base here. But that would not be of competition o the IIM’s. These schools would not be able to charge anything below fifteen lakh for their courses, where as a student at IIMC have to merely rupees two lakh as course fee. But then the IIM’s too will have to update their teaching tools and techniques. However one good thing that will happen to management education in India if big foreign B-schools come here is that the Indian B-schools with poor academic quality will get wiped out.

It is true that with B-schools mushrooming in every part of India there is a concern with the quality of education imparted by them.
Right. Many of them flout norms set by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). But hen such B-Schools can only be brought to books if AICTE has a strong enforcement team.

Many educationists feel that the proposed twenty seven percent reservation of OBC’s in the higher education institution including the IIM’s would result in fall of quality of education, is the popular view. Do you fear the same?
The IIM’s in any case have to increases their intake capacity in the coming years. In a country with such huge population offering 1500 seats collectively cannot satisfy us. We will have to implement OBC quota once he ministry of human resource development gives us green signal. For that we are already working on our infrastructure development and would ensure that the quality does not suffer.
Mou.Chakraborty@hindustantimes.com