IIM-K changes curriculum, hopes it's a 'trendsetter'

It is taking tips from Stanford, Harvard and MIT for the revamp.

The Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K) is in the process of revamping its curriculum for its two-year flagship post graduate programme (PGP). The process, which will take six months to complete, began a month-and-a-half back.

IIM-K has set up a four-member committee comprising the Deans of a Singapore and Canadian business school besides a faculty member from IIM-K and the director himself to update the new curriculum. The curriculum will include suggestions from global faculty members of the likes of Standford, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The 13-year old institute last updated its curriculum two years ago and plans to incorporate far more realistic topics to tackle future business agenda this time.

“Today’s classrooms are more like a movie theatre where the performer has to create a connection with the audience, unlike earlier when it was like an operation theatre where the doctor would just deliver. In a 90-minute session, we have to capture the students’ imagination instead of just delivering. The current curriculum does not reflect the changing times and needs to be revamped to suit a competitive world,” says Debashis Chatterjee, director, IIM Kozhikode.

The institute intends to design a curriculum that would not only be futuristic but also instill values in students.

“IIM-K will have a trendsetter curriculum. We have included not just the new economic scenario but the new world. So far, businesses were being licensed only by the government, but future businesses will be licensed by the community, society and the environment. Keeping that in mind, the hallmark of the curriculum will be ‘perspective’ building. Students will be much more socially-sensitive and environmentally-committed. It will be more realistic, will create a better sense of responsibility and will deliver value for future businesses which would demand a lot more from the managers of tomorrow,” says Chatterjee.

IIM-K, which claims to have more number of female and underprivileged students than other business schools, will unfold the new curriculum in the 2011-12 academic year. Chatterjee concludes, “We have given a broad perspective to the curriculum. We are working on the details. We need to ask questions like ‘How to capture the imagination of the student of the future’ for the content.”