IIM-A, IIM-B slip 10 positions on QS Global MBA Rankings 2021

The country’s top management institutions, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM A) and Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM B) have dropped sharply in the latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Global MBA Rankings 2021. Such has been the fall that IIM Ahmedabad has barely managed to remain in the top 50 institutes.

While IIM A has slipped to the 50th position from last year’s rank of 40, IIM B has also gone down 10 ranks — to 54 from 44 the last year. Other institutes from India that featured in the list of the world’s top 200 B-schools include IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, Indian School of Business and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (Mumbai). IIM C leapfrogged from the 101-110 group to the 79th position in the list.

“The main concern would be that Indian schools as a collective have slipped. I will plan to discuss this with my fellow directors,” said IIM B Director Professor Rishikesha T Krishnan.

In all, there are 12 Indian master’s programmes featured in the series of QS business master’s rankings — four more than last year. The new entrants are IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, Great Lakes Institute of Management Chennai, and IFIM Business School.

Stanford Graduate School of Business continues to lead the global list, followed by the Wharton School, MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Business School.

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The core metrics of the QS business masters rankings include employability, entrepreneurship and alumni outcomes, return on investment, thought leadership and class and faculty diversity. Collectively these rankings cover the post-graduate programmes that are most in-demand amongst employers around the world.

“Whether it is companies seeking to distribute Covid-19 vaccines, or sectors such as e-commerce, which are experiencing rapid growth since the start of the pandemic, companies around the world are hiring talent specialised in supply chain management,” said QS CEO Nunzio Quacquarelli. “Like the growth in data analytics, this is an emerging career path for the next decade. At QS, we have expanded our series of business masters rankings to include the most sought-after career specialisations,” Quacquarelli added.

In addition to analysing programme-related inputs, QS has also considered the reputation of specific business schools from the perspective of nearly 37,000 global employers and more than 34,000 global academics to come up with these rankings. These rankings are considered to be an important tool to choose and learn about MBA programmes that are offered globally.

Meanwhile, in the QS Masters in Management Rankings, too, the top three IIMs have fallen in the pecking order. While IIM A has gone down from 27 to 31, IIM B has slipped nine positions, from 26 to 35, and IIM C from 46 to 51. IIM Lucknow and IIM Kozhikode are the new entrants in this list in the 101+ band.