Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Mushrooming B-Schools in India and Pseudo Ranking Surveys

The first ranking of B-Schools in India in 2010 was carried out by Career-360 (monthly). The researcher physically visited our campus in Manipal travelling all the way from New Delhi and had first hand discussions with Students, Faculty and Staff. Their claim is that they adopted a scientific input-process-out mechanism to collect data, visit the campuses, interact with faculty and students to arrive at the rankings. The 50 Schools list is being disputed by some; while some notable players have not participated.

We have over 2,000 B-Schools - in public (Govt backed and University Depts), private or (psedo) foreign collaborated Institutes. There are multiple regulators like UGC, MHRD, AICTE, AIU, DEC, etc., and several Associations like AMDISA, AIMS, AIMS-International, etc. About 25-30 types of Entrance Exams are being conducted and Coaching Centres are flourishing day by day. In India, at least 15 to 20 such Surveys are being carried out, of late. An aspirant is getting confused. The latest entrant, interestingly, is Dun and Bradstreet, India to carry out a thorough professional exercise on all related aspects.

Hence, how will a genuine MBA-seeker get authentic ranking to freeze his choice School? Will the recuiters be able to identify good Schools from average ones? Whether age of the school or faculty (intellectual capital), location, accreditation, placement record, publications and research, physical infrastructure and ambience, library-computing facilities, student-faculty academic and other achievements, etc are all properly captured in all such ranking surveys? Do we need to have a regulator for such ranking exercises? Should it be carried out once in a year or more than once? Like Credit Rating Agencies being overseen by SEBI, do we need some intervention or governance of all these bodies/agencies? There are many such questions to be answered to take the B-School Rankings seriously, at least in Indian scene.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Its very well said Sir. We need a regulatory body that not only issues ranking but also keeps check on the quality of education imparted. So that these colleges cannot allure students showing false dreams.

Dr Chowdari Prasad said...

Thanks Rachana for sharing your views and practical experience.