New IIMs raise mentorship concerns

The existing IIMs will have to guide the new ones even as the issue of faculty crunch has raised its ugly head again

With the Manmohan Singh government approving seven new Indian Institutes of Management (IIM), the faculty and management of the existing ones appear to be under stress.

Given the recommendations of the Bhargava committee that existing IIMs — which include IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Calcutta, IIM-Lucknow, IIM-Kozhikode, IIM-Indore and IIM-Shillong — will have to mentor the new ones, issues like faculty crunch and even fewer faculty with PhDs have once again raised their ugly heads.

For instance, IIM-Indore which is likely to mentor IIM- Raipur (Chattisgarh), given its proximity to the institute, has a long way to go before it reaches the required faculty strength of 450. Currently, according to V K Gupta, dean of IIM-Indore, the institute has a total faculty strength of around 40. “We will have to create faculty and provide whatever other assistance that we can to the new IIM that we will mentor. I am guessing we will be asked to mentor Raipur since it is close to our campus. We are working on a model to get the best of the faculty for ourselves meanwhile,” Gupta said.

The proposed seven new IIMs will be set up in Trichy (Tamil Nadu), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Rohtak (Haryana), Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, and Rajasthan. While the first four will start classes in the 2010-11 academic year, the rest will be operational from the year after.

Even IIM-Ahmedabad, which intends to have a faculty strength of around 110 by 2011, was able to add around only 10 faculty members in last 15 months. IIM-A, which will be mentoring the upcoming IIM in Rajasthan, has a faculty strength of over 90.

As of now, the existing IIMs are waiting for a communication from the Centre on which new IIMs they will have to mentor before they begin tackling the challenges. "We have not received any communication from the Centre yet. We have agreed to mentor the IIMs and will come to know once the process of mentoring starts as to what are the challenges we face and what are we expected to do," says Pankaj Chandra, Director, IIM-Bangalore.

Moreover, the old IIMs are also occupied with fulfilling the quota implementation requirements and incurring expenditure on infrastructure expansion at their respective campuses.

An allocation of Rs 451 crore as non-recurring expenditure and Rs 118 crore as recurring expenditure has been sanctioned by the Centre for the new IIMs for the first phase. While the new IIMs will begin their academic sessions with a minimum batch strength of 140, the number can go up to 560 eventually.