177 IIM-U grads to be conferred degrees instead of diplomas

Nearly 177 students graduating from the IIM-Udaipur, tomorrow will be the second batch of IIM graduates after Bangalore to receive MBA degrees instead of diplomas, an official said today.

Indian Institute of Management-Udaipur will be the second institute after IIM-Bangalore to confer degrees on students completing its flagship two-year Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management at a convocation tomorrow, IIM-U Director Janat Shah told PTI.

He said a meeting was held with the Union HRD minister last week after which a decision was taken to confer degrees on 177 students of the PGP course this year.

However, diplomas would be awarded to students of the PGPX programme, Shah added.

Sunil Munjal of the Hero Group would be the chief guest of the IIM-U convocation, he said.

While, IIM-Bangalore awarded degrees to its students this year, IIM-Lucknow conferred diplomas and IIM-Indore was also likely to award degrees this year, he added.

The IIM-U director said formalities to award degrees for other programmes would take time as special approval might be required due to the nomenclature of the course.

The decision to award degrees was taken by the IIM-U after the Indian Institute of Management Bill,2017 was passed in the Parliament in December last year.

"We had decided to award degrees after the bill was passed, but then, due to a circular on regulatory framework for degree granting issued by the MHRD, the decision was kept on hold and later in a meeting, things were sorted out and it was decided to go ahead with awarding degrees for the PGP course," Shah said.

Being societies, IIMs were earlier not authorised to award degrees and, hence, they were awarding post-graduate diplomas and fellowships in management, he said, adding that while these awards were treated as equivalent to MBAs and PhDs respectively, the equivalence was not universally acceptable.

With greater autonomy now, IIMs would now be able to award degrees, besides having more say in administration, recruitment and daily functioning,he added.