Engineers will continue to dominate IIM campuses

High enrollment in engineering courses and CAT's math tilt help these students

Engineers will continue to dominate the campuses of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). With the top eight 100 percentile scorers being engineers and initial data showing that a large chunk of engineers gave Common Admission Test (CAT) 2013, the classrooms of these business schools will have BE and B Tech graduates filling up most seats.

"Engineers taking up most IIM seats has been the case and will continue this year too. The main cause for this is the number of students taking up engineering courses as compared to arts and commerce courses. There is a general push by parents, too, to enroll their children into engineering and medical streams and hence, there are a large proportion of engineers who appear for CAT," said Sai Kumar, Director, TIME Mumbai.

WHY MALES & ENGINEERS DOMINATE CAT

• CAT consists of two sections having 60 questions. Almost 40 questions are based on pure mathematics or its applications
• About 24% of students in India are enrolled in engineering and technology courses
• Only 20%-25% females enroll in engineering courses, reducing their number in the pool
• Incentives to attract non-engineers haven’t worked. IIM-Calcutta & IIM-Lucknow offer 3% weightage to candidates from non-engineering backgrounds
• Female candidates are given more weightage at IIM-Calcutta and IIM-Lucknow during admission process post CAT
• CAT exam pattern is yet to be changed; other institutes are revisiting their exam patterns

The report 'Higher Education in India: Vision 2030' by Ficci and Ernst & Young (EY), released in November, says out of the 30 million students in 2011-12, about 24 per cent were enrolled into engineering/technology streams. Science and commerce streams accounted for 15 per cent each, while law constituted only 2 per cent. It also said that among the European Union, United Kingdom, United States and India, the country with maximum engineering enrollment was India.

While Arts was the top stream of choice with respect to enrollment according to the Ficci-EY report, officials pointed that such students have diverse career choices and very few of them opt for management courses. "Arts students go for academics and other diverse professions. However, engineering followed by management has become one of the most common courses opted by students in India," said the head of academics of a new IIM.

Though officials figures were not available, insiders suggest that almost 55-60 per cent of CAT entrance exam takers were from engineering backgrounds. "Being from engineering may put you at a disadvantage with respect to final selections by IIMs, compared to an Arts or Law graduate. But, cracking the entrance is the first step and that is where these engineering degree holders get it right," said the head of a New Delhi-based MBA coaching institute.

That is because the CAT examination pattern, with a clear skew towards the mathematical ability of a student, helps engineers, say experts.

Gautam Puri, vice chairman & managing director, CL Educate said out of 60 questions in CAT, almost 40 were based on maths. "The ideal pattern would be to have a mix of 50-50 with respect to maths and language. The system as a whole is biased," added Puri.

H Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH, said CAT did not offer a positive balance in academic quotient, emotional quotient and social quotient, which are needed for a professional to be effective and efficient in the corporate world.

"The entrance test has been set up in such manner that it has been biased towards engineers, which is creating an imbalance in the labour market eco-system. Across the world, B-schools are changing their admission process to have more and more categories. CAT, with its bias towards engineers, does not allow others to be part of India's management pool," he said.

But, officials associated with implementing CAT say they have not yet decided on changing the examination pattern. "We are yet to take any decision for CAT 2014," said a senior official associated with the process.

A senior IIM admissions official warns that unless the CAT exam pattern is changed, no difference would be seen in enrollments.

Some IIMs had earlier said they were also concerned over the low number of female applicants taking the CAT and were also looking to go deeper to find out the reasons for the same. A senior IIM admissions official said that unless CAT exam pattern is changed, no difference would be seen in enrollments.

CAT 2013 was conducted between October 16 and November 11, 2013 and 1.94 lakh candidates had registered for it. Out of these, 1,73,735 candidates eventually appeared for CAT 2013.