Scenes From Up And Down The Stairs

We present our annual B-school rankings in a challenging year. Elsewhere, we focus on family businesses, MBA maestros and Bollywood.

- Arindam Mukherjee

Business schools in India are at a crossroads. On the one hand, there is a growing demand for more B-schools to accommodate more and more students dreaming of a cove­ted MBA degree. On the other is a fading MBA gleam, with the industry gradu­ally folding its hands on recruiting neophyte managers. While mur­­murs about this were doing the rounds, last year industry body Ass­­ocham bit the bullet and said only seven per cent MBAs were employable. Today, the statistical ratio may be worse, as more schools churn out mint-fresh MBAs.

In this scenario, leading B-schools like the IIMs are reinventing themselves to stay relevant and bring out graduates that matter to the industry. A bill for aut­o­n­omy of the IIMs has already been pas­sed by the Lok Sabha. This will give it more teeth, apart from more freedom to cho­ose its curriculum and match  steps with the industry’s needs. Many of the other top B-schools will follow a similar line. But the ones lower down the line will need to do serious thinking of how to stay relevant and survive this deepening freeze.