Takers for doctoral faculty development programmes up slightly at IIMs

IIM Lucknow sees applications rise from 250 to 300 in the past three years

Fellow programme in management (FPM) and faculty development programme (FDP), two sources of inducting trained faculty for the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have seen marginal rise in applications in the past 3-5 years.  

While IIM Lucknow has seen applications rise from 250 to 300 in the past three years, IIM Kozhikode has seen the same fall from 272 in 2013 to 134 this year. "The number of candidates enrolling for FPM varies from year to year. The past trend shows that there has been a marginal increase in the enrollment year by year," an IIM-K spokesperson stated.

According to IIMs, several FPM and FDP candidates go on to join other institutes or other IIMs, with few joining back the same IIM from where they graduate from.  For instance, at IIM-K, many of the FPM graduates of IIM Kozhikode have joined other IIMs and national level institutes.  

However, while the fellow programmes help in building a pool of doctoral candidates that could be potential faculty members for IIMs, the numbers have not risen significantly.  Resultantly, majority of faculty recruitment at IIMs happen directly.

Also, there has been some amount of cross-movement across campuses with fellow programmes of their peers emerging as a source for recruitment for IIMs. "IIM Kozhikode has also recruited a good number of FPM graduates of other IIMs and higher education institutes," according to the spokesperson.

At IIM Lucknow too, the FPM is aimed at producing world-class scholars in nine select areas of management research, consultancy and teaching. "FPM at IIM-L provides enough flexibility for scholars with different backgrounds for interdisciplinary research. Fellows of IIM-L are working as faculty members in IIMs and IITs  as well as leading management institutes and universities around the world such as the Aalborg University. Few of them are working at senior positions in consultancy firms such as Accenture, General Electric and research organisations like ISRO," said the FPM chair at IIM Lucknow.

IIM Calcutta which receives around 300 applications for its fellow programme, too finds that the number of candidates enrolling into FPM and eventually being recruited as faculty has been "approximately constant". 

The FPM chair at IIM Calcutta stated, of its total 98 batch size, around two are from IIM Calcutta while 16 are from other IIMs.  "Most of the fellow graduates from IIM Calcutta join as a faculty in the IIMs. Last year five IIM-C fellow graduates joined (other) IIMs," the chair further stated.

Applications for faculty development programs (FDP) too, where candidates are trained for faculty positions, have not grown significantly. 

At IIM Ahmedabad, the FDP programme garners a minimum of 65-70 applications every year, with the trend remaining more or less the same. However, according to the FDP spokesperson at IIM-A, while the institute gets 1-2 applications from other IIMs for FDP, "so far no FDP participant has joined our institute but some participants have joined other IIMs".

IIMs believe that while doctoral and faculty development programmes have been able to meet the faculty requirement to some extent, more needs to be done. 

"The doctoral programme has been able to reduce the faculty gap. The institute is planning to select more number of candidates for its FPM programme based on suitability and merit. To a large extent FPM degree holders have bridged the gap between demand and supply of quality faculty members for premier management institutes but with exponential growth in number of IIMs recently the gap still exists," said IIM-K spokesperson.

Meanwhile, according to the FDP spokesperson at IIM-A, "Both these programmes have produced faculty who are working in the field of management. However there is vast need to have many more well trained faculty and many more such programmes."