The Indian B-school story appears to be going from bad to worse. Not only are the enrolments on a downward trend, but campus placements and salary packages offered to MBA graduates are on a decline, a survey has revealed.
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), in a paper on ‘B-Schools are facing the consequences of economic slowdown’ released on Wednesday, has said the economic slowdown has hit a large number of business schools other than the top 15 to 20 institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Management.
The paper says there has been a sharp 40 to 50 per cent drop in campus hiring and almost an equivalent rate of decline in the number of students opting for fresh admissions this year compared to 2012. The salary packages offered at B-schools and engineering colleges have also taken a beating of 35 to 40 per cent and there is also no hike in the average pay packages, the paper added.
This year, offers from the financial and telecom sectors have also gone down by 35 per cent. Enrolment-wise, there has been a drop of about 15,000 to 18,000 in total registrations this year. The paper quoted one of the directors of an institution surveyed as saying: “Some colleges have been forced to close several programmes, making the faculty redundant.”
A press release quoted D.S. Rawat, secretary general, ASSOCHAM, as saying, “Recruitments at the campus have gone down drastically. As a result, a large number of the B-schools and engineering colleges are not able to attract students. More than 190 B-schools have already closed down in 2012 in the major cities of Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Kolkata, Lucknow and Dehradun. Another 165 are struggling for survival. The situation in engineering colleges is worse since a mushrooming growth in their numbers.”
What went wrong?
Speaking about what the top institutes are doing right, Sankarshan Basu, chairperson, Career Development Services, IIM-B, told The Hindu that the selection process to the IIMs was more a ‘process of elimination’.
“This way, we get the top 2 per cent of students for our programmes, who are the most employable. In addition, we (the IIMs) attract the best faculty. We also have a significant amount of industry connect,” Prof. Basu said. He added that the Indian industry, which was driven by degrees earlier, was now focussing more on delivery, due to which they were more careful with recruitments.
