400+ IIM MBAs Petition PM Modi to Amend IIM Bill: Ensure MBA Degree Is Exclusive to Globally Accredited One Year MBA

Students say Made in India MBAs must meet global standards – MBA status should be bestowed on One Year MBAs and MBM status on two-year PGP courses, in line with the global accreditation awarded to these courses.

Modi’s tiger has roared. IIM alumni and students, more than 400 of them, have spoken out unanimously like never before on a critical issue of management education.

Students from leading IIMs, such as IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Indore and IIM Lucknow, have signed OneYearMBA.co.in’s petition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Irani asking for changes in the upcoming IIM Bill to ensure that the Masters in Business Administration (MBA) degree at IIMs is awarded to One Year MBA courses and Masters in Business Management (MBM) degree is awarded to two-year PGP programmes, in sync with the global accreditation awarded to these courses by Association of MBAs (AMBA). AMBA is one of the top 3 global business education accreditation bodies and the only one that accredits courses instead of B-Schools – other bodies such as EQUIS and AACSB certify the overall quality of an institute.

AMBA has been accrediting courses run by IIMs and has so far conferred the MBA status only on the one-year MBA of IIM Calcutta and IIM Lucknow. But IIMs are not communicating this loud and clear to all and sundry.

435 students have signed the petition as of date. These students are asking the government and educational authorities to take a clear stand and ensure that Made in India MBAs meet global standards. Globally, an MBA is a post-experience degree. AMBA stipulates that only students with three years or more of work experience can pursue it and that an MBA class, taken as a whole, must have a minimum average work experience of 5 years.

This stipulation is meant to ensure that an MBA course delivers on its stated goal of preparing mid-career professionals for leadership roles. Students with substantial work experience can connect lessons taught in class with their past corporate experience and learn extensively from their peers, who all bring years of knowledge to class. This ensures that MBA graduates step out of B-School as mature individuals ready to tackle leadership roles.

Only One Year MBA courses at IIMs that stipulate a minimum of 5 years of work experience as an eligibility requirement meet and exceed global norms for an MBA course and are consequently accredited as Full Time MBAs by AMBA.

While the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), an Indian regulatory body, awards ‘MBA equivalent’ status to two-year PGP courses offered by IIMs, AMBA, accredits these very same courses as pre-experience Masters in Business Management (MBM) worldwide.

AMBA’s accreditation standards are clear: an MBA course must admit students with 3+ years of work experience while an MBM can admit candidates with 0-3 years work experience. So students with less than 3 years of work experience are eligible to pursue an MBM, not an MBA. Since the two-year PGP courses at IIMs largely recruit freshers (most admits have less than a year of work experience and many have zero work experience), these courses are accredited by AMBA as MBMs.

Links to the official accreditation page of AMBA show that IIM C’s One Year MBA (called PGPEX) has been accredited as a full time MBA while its PGP course has been accredited as an MBM. Similarly while IIM Lucknow’s One Year MBA (called IPMX) has been accredited as a full time MBA, its PGP course has been accredited as an MBM.

The IIM Bill, which is set to be tabled in the Indian Parliament, ignores these facts and will empower IIMs to grant MBA degrees to graduates of the two-year PGP course (as against the MBA equivalent diplomas  that they currently grant under the aegis of AIU).There is simply no talk about conferring the MBA degree on the One Year MBA, the real contender for this degree!

“Giving importance to local accreditation (by AIU) based on sub-par standards over global accreditation (by AMBA) for institutes of national importance is a retrogressive step and jeopardizes IIMs’ aspiration of becoming global leaders in management education,” says the petition.

“IIMs have sought AMBA accreditation to establish global credence and have proudly proclaimed that winning AMBA accreditation testifies that their MBA course meets global standards. IIM Calcutta proudly announced the winning of AMBA’s MBA accreditation for its One Year MBA (PGPEX) and MBM Accreditation for its two-year PGP course in the media. ‘We are indeed happy to receive this recognition. It reaffirms our commitment to academic excellence, and marks a significant step towards our journey to be regarded as a global leader in management education,’ Saibal Chattopadhyay, director of IIM Calcutta, had said on winning the accreditation,” adds the petition.

“Similarly, IIM Lucknow announced its win of AMBA accreditation with gusto. ‘It took us almost one year to get AMBA accreditation,’ said Sanjay K. Singh, a professor at IIM-Lucknow, adding,’As Indian education opens up, foreign institutes will come home and domestic institutes will go abroad. Here, international accreditation helps. It improves your brand image for sure.’

If the IIMs now award an MBA for a course that does not meet international criteria for being called one, they will be compromising their credibility,” continues the petition.

The petition points out that awarding MBA status to the two-year PGP course will have multiple negative ramifications:

• Impact on Indian students: Indian students will be misled into believing that they are earning an MBA degree when in fact the course does not meet global accreditation standards for an MBA. The unhealthy impression that has been cultivated among Indian students, that an MBA can be pursued without any real world work experience, will be perpetuated and will deny Indian students a chance to leverage their graduation degree, as students usually do outside India by working for a few years before heading to B-School.
• Impact on Indian companies: The two-year PGP course at IIMs has all this time been creating entry level talent and not managers as an MBA course is expected to – companies in India invest millions every year retraining this fresh stock to make them business-ready through extensive management trainee programmes – an undue burden on Indian companies, most of whom have been asking for MBAs that are war-ready. Graduates of the One Year Full Time MBA courses at IIMs, with a work experience of five to ten years behind them, join companies as Senior Managers, Vice-presidents and CEOs, the way their MBA counterparst from any full time course (one-year or two-year) abroad would. This is the talent Indian companies are asking for, but they are being confused by the positioning of two distinctly different courses as MBA.
• Impact on IIM’s competitiveness: The legislation will compromise IIMs ability to compete with global B-Schools in attracting foreign students who are used to an MBA class where each individual has years of expertise in their field. Also once foreign B-Schools establish campuses in India in the coming years, the huge gap in the quality of MBAs produced by foreign B-Schools (who admit candidates with substantial work ex) and the PGP students produced by IIMs will become starkly apparent.

Complete text of petition and live status of signatures collected are available at: bit.ly/amendiimbill

Besides global accreditation, IIM’s One Year MBA leads the two-year PGP on all parameters and is the sole and rightful recipient of MBA status:

• Only course to represent IIMs in Financial Times Global MBA Ranking: The One Year MBA course at IIMs represents the institutes at the prestigious Financial Times (FT) Global MBA Ranking where IIMs’ PGP courses don’t meet the norms to qualify. IIM A’s One Year Full Time MBA (PGPX) debuted on the FT Ranking at Rank 11 in 2011 and is currently ranked No. 26 in the list of top 100 MBAs in the world. IIM B’s One Year MBA (EPGP) is ranked 82 in this ranking. In fact, IIM A’s One Year MBA (PGPX) trumped Harvard’s MBA on Career progression in the FT Global MBA Ranking 2015! The two-year PGP programmes at IIMs are ranked separately in FT’s Masters in Business Management (MBM/ alternatively MIM) Ranking.
• Superior placements: Graduates of One Year MBA Courses at IIMs join companies in senior roles. Average salary awarded to these graduates across IIMs ranges between 18- 31 lakh. Two-year PGP graduates join companies as entry-level management trainees with salaries ranging between 10- 17 lakh on an average across IIMs.
• Richer learning: Thanks to their prior work experience, the candidates of the one-year course can connect class discussions to their own experiences in corporate life. This helps them question, debate and absorb new management concepts in a thorough manner. With almost 600 years of collective corporate wisdom available in a typical class of 60 candidates at an IIM, the peer learning the course offers is amazing. As opposed to freshers admitted to the two-year PGP programme, students admitted to the One Year MBA include CAs, doctors, army Colonels and Majors, nuclear scientists and advertising creative directors, etc.
• Tougher eligibility norms: Students for the One Year MBA at IIMs need to have a minimum of 5 years work experience to be eligible to apply to the course. To be eligible for the two-year PGP course, a student requires no work-ex, just 50% marks in graduation.

The petition has been submitted through the Modi government’s MyGov.In platform, where the draft IIM bill has been put for the public consultation process. Besides, physical copies of the petition are being sent to the Prime Minister and the HRD Minister. Read the petition at: bit.ly/amendiimbill