MBA AT IITS
Managing The Technicalities
Management courses at IITs are catching up with top B-schools in this year’s BW ranking
CHETNA MEHRA
15 May 2009
 |
THE TECH EDGE: The management
programme at IIT-Delhi started in
1997 (Pics By Tribhuwan Sharma) |
It has been two years since Rohit Deshmukh, 28, joined Marico India as a business applications manager, where he acts as an interface between the company’s IT and supply chain functions. Deshmukh, an engineer from Mumbai University, had final calls from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay’s Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management (SJMSOM), which ranked No. 14 in BW’s 2009 listing of best B-schools. He opted for IIT over the IIM brand, “after discussing my options and career interests with many people from the industry”. Like Deshmukh, scores of engineers are finding management nirvana in Departments of Management Studies (DoMS) at the IITs.
It is not difficult to see why. Despite the ongoing slowdown, the average domestic salary of an SJMSOM graduate was Rs 10.29 lakh per annum this year. Last year, that number had shot up 44 per cent from 2007, reaching Rs 13.96 lakh, on a par with IIMs. Similarly, IIT-Delhi’s DoMS boasted an average domestic salary of Rs 11.92 lakh last year, and Rs 9.47 lakh this year.
The IITs, India’s premier technology learning centres, were established more than half a century ago, but the move to provide management education began only in 1993, when IIT- Kharagpur founded Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM). Subsequently, the other IITs too joined the bandwagon — IIT-Bombay (in 1995) IIT-Delhi (in 1997), IIT-Madras (in 2001), IIT-Kanpur (in 2001) and IIT-Roorkee (in 1998). “When IITs got into management education, their theory was to turn technical students into techno-managers as they realised most students go for an MBA degree after engineering,” says V.K. Nangia, who heads IIT-Roorkee’s DoMS.
The Good...
One area where IITs compare favourably with top rung B-schools is faculty. “Our faculty members are all experts in their respective fields,” says Karuna Jain, head of department at SJMSOM. Recruiting only doctorates is a regulatory requirement — as per guidelines of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) — which proves to be a limitation for the IITs. “Our constraint inbringing in good faculty is mainly the requirement of PhD,” says Surendra Singh Yadav, head of IIT-Delhi’s DoMS. As a result, the faculty-student ratio is a bit unfavourable. For example, IIT-Delhi has 15 core faculty at its DoMS. Given 250 students, the faculty-student ratio is 1:17. “The ideal ratio is 1:11,” says Yadav.
The technology-oriented culture at the IITs helps students broaden their horizons. “They share hostels and classrooms with BTech, MTech and PhD students and work on projects with them. This enriches the overall experience,” says Deshmukh. MBA offered by IITs has another advantage: low fees. An IIT student pays around Rs 3 lakh for the two-year MBA — Rs 4 lakh less than the cheapest IIM. “IITs are government institutions, so a big chunk of the funds comes from the MHRD,” says Yadav.
... The Not So Good...
There are a few cons, too. Unlike premier B-schools, some IITs don’t hold student and faculty exchange programmes with B-schools abroad. “We don’t see such tie-ups taking place in the near future,” says IIT-Roorkee’s Nangia.
<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>
|
Sensex rises 61 points in opening trade 
