Page 111 - EW May 2025

developed country, India is routinely
ranked among the world’s poorest and
backward nations defined by acute
shortages of food, clothing, shelter,
affordable healthcare and education.
A recent (April 25) panel discussion
at the EducationWorld India Higher
Education Rankings 2025-26 Awards
featuring some of India’s most re-
spected academics, which examined
the topic “Why haven’t India’s 47,000
colleges and 1,168 universities pro-
duced even one game-changer prod-
uct, service or disruptive technology
in 77 years?”, provided no satisfactory
answer.
Obviously, this pathetic also-ran
condition of India Inc and the Indian
economy can’t be pinned on the coun-
try’s B-schools, although some mea-
sure of the blame for none of India’s ISB campus vista: Financial Times #27 global rank
companies being listed among the
largest, most respected, competitive averaged a pitiful GDP growth of 3.5 of Rs.250 crore, ISB has built an excel-
and innovative corporations world- percent per annum for over 40 years, lent reputation for providing globally
wide, has to be laid at their collective other B-schools mushroomed all over comparable business management ed-
door. the country providing good, bad and ucation to its students obliged to fork
India’s first major B-school, the indifferent business management ed- out Rs.33-35 lakh for its 13-month
Indian Institute of Management-Cal- ucation to an ever increasing number fully residential MBA programme. In
cutta (IIM-C) was established in 1961 of students. effect, this tuition fee is double that
with American funding and grudg- Against this backdrop in 2013, we of the top IIMs which after decades
ingly permitted collaboration with the introduced the EducationWorld India of over-subidisation currently levy an
MIT’s Sloan School of Management Higher Education Rankings (EWI- equivalent fee for their two-year MBA
(USA). IIM-C was soon followed by HER). But with the IIMs dominating programmes. Nevertheless, most IIMs
IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore. the initial EW B-school league tables continue to be heavily subsidized and
Yet the contribution of these three (and all media rankings), and bear- a provision of Rs.251.89 crore has
premier IIMs to the national develop- ing in mind that they admit a mere been made in the Union Budget 2025-
ment effort remained hazy until the 2 percent of MBA aspirants, in 2016 26 for them.
advent of the country’s first business we stopped ranking IIMs and govern- According to ISB spokespersons,
magazines — Business India and Busi- ment B-schools and focused on rank- this huge (by Indian standards) tu-
nessWorld — made private enterprise ing privately promoted institutions ition fee is justified because of its part-
respectable and shone a spotlight on which admit the overwhelming ma- nerships with top ranked B-schools
these pioneer B-schools which despite jority of college graduates signing up worldwide, and its global #27 Finan-
their capital-intensive infrastructure for B-school education. cial Times (London) 2025 global rank-
and 100-acre campuses certified a Since then, the EW league table of ing. However though its FT rank is
mere 200-300 highly subsidised private B-schools has been dominated above the premier ABC IIMs — IIM-
MBAs annually. by the Indian School of Business, Ahmedabad (#31), IIM-Bangalore
Suddenly, the two-year wholly resi- Hyderabad (ISB) funded in 2002 (57) and IIM-Calcutta (67) — it is per-
dential MBA programmes of the IIMs by several of the biggest names of In- tinent to note that ISB is ranked below
became very popular and 250,000- dia Inc — Ambani, Godrej, Bajaj and the China Europe International Busi-
280,000 candidates started writing Rajat Gupta (McKinsey, New York) — ness School (12), Shanghai University
CAT (Common Admission Test) of on a 260-acre state-of-the art campus of Finance and Economics: College
the IIMs whose number has since in Gachibowli, suburban Hyderabad. of Business (15), Nanyang Business
multiplied to 21 countrywide. More- And over the past almost quarter cen- School, NTU, Singapore (22), Peking
over with incremental liberalisation tury since this private B-school was University: Guanghua School of Man-
of the shackled Indian economy which promoted with a reported endowment agement (25), and Fudan University

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