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Threat to autonomy may be a crucial element for the older Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in the draft IIM Bill but for their newer peers, it is the degree granting power that is a must.
Even as the Centre deliberates on the Bill after considering all suggestions received, two factions have emerged among the IIMs on the draft Bill.
"There are some areas where there are differences between the old and new IIMs. The newer IIMs value degree more than the established ones because we feel that for the students a degree is very important. Established IIMs might feel they don't need it. Also, with regard to autonomy, it seems to be unintentional on the part of the government and we sense a lot of this will go away," said the director of one of the new IIMs on the contentious Bill.
B S Sahay, director, IIM Raipur, is also of the view that degree-granting power is necessary.
"This Bill is much needed, and will help all IIMs grant degrees. We cannot deny its benefits. The Bill advocates that instead of PGP, we should be able to give MBA, and in place of FPM, PhD. The government has done a great thing by putting it up for public consultation and inviting comments," Sahay said.
The draft IIM Bill 2015 proposes to grant statutory status to 13 existing IIMs at Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Indore, Kozhikode, Shillong, Raipur, Ranchi, Rohtak, Kashipur, Tiruchirappalli and Udaipur, and declare these institutions of national importance, to enable them to grant degrees to students in academic courses conducted by these institutes.
However, older IIMs have protested against such subjection of the Board of Governors (BoG) to government control for any regulation, which could range from appointing chairpersons and directors, fixing fees and staff remuneration, to deciding the curriculum. The IIMs also argue the current form of the draft was not what was agreed upon by the institutes in their meeting with the Ministry of Human Resources Development in October 2014.
The director of a new IIM said, "The Bill will definitely impact autonomy. If the government wants us to take prior approval in everything we do, where is the autonomy ensured? Why do we need prior approval when government officials are on the board? There is no logic to these suggestions."
In a recent press conference, A M Naik, chairman of BoG at IIM-Ahmedabad, had stated, "The final Bill, which was approved between all the IIMs and the MHRD, has been 'completely changed' and made even worse than where we started three years ago with sweeping powers with the government, which virtually makes the institution really only an operational centre, with all the major diktats or the directions and approvals, regulations, happening from Delhi."
In the same conference, IIM-A director Ashish Nanda had said, "Our stance is that there is a misunderstanding from their side. We are actually having a conversation with them to help them understand how we see the impact of the Bill. Oversight, we don't mind, but micromanagement is not good."
The BoG of other older IIMs like IIM-Lucknow and IIM-Bangalore had also written to the MHRD expressing concern on ambiguity over the autonomy of these premier B-schools.
The question that really divides the IIMs is whether there is a need for granting degrees.
While most older IIMs (there are six - Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Indore and Kozhikode) are happy to continue offering postgraduate diploma in management certificates (PGDM), the newer ones want degree-granting powers since an MBA is believed to carry more weightage than a PGDM.
It is this argument of the latter that the government latched on to for proposing changes in the draft Bill. "Till now, these institutions could award only certificate, Post Graduate Diploma and Fellow Programme in Management Certificate, which lacked universal acceptability in the field of academia and research. The Post Graduate Diploma in Management Programme was relatively unaffected by the absence of a formal degree, both in terms of recruitment of students and suitable placements in job market, but the Fellow Programme in Management did not get the same status as that of a PhD in the job market, especially in faculty appointments. As a result, the Fellow Programme in Management (equivalent to PhD), without the formal degree stamp, has not been able to attract talented students, required to develop a strong research base in the country in the field of management education and also address the faculty shortages affecting the management institutions in the country. The proposed Bill will address this gap,"
the MHRD had stated while putting up the draft for public consultation online.
Meanwhile, the older IIMs argue that given their success in terms of global rankings and student placements, among other things, the premise of granting degrees tends to be the weakest in the whole Bill issue. "The issue of granting degrees itself is the meekest one. The PGDM certificates offered by IIMs are stronger than any MBA degrees and it would, in fact, degrade the IIMs if we began offering degrees instead of PGDM," said a faculty member at IIM-A.
