The FT B-school rankings recently placed IIM Bangalore’s two-year PGP as the number one among Indian B-schools and 31st in the world, up 16 places from the last year. Director Rishikesha Krishnan explains what it takes to earn these spurs.
What did IIM B do in the past year that saw it’s FT global rankings zoom up 16 places to 31?
IIM Bangalore is part of many global and domestic rankings. Many of these have different criteria. It is neither possible nor desirable to “target” these criteria. Consistent with our vision and mission, we focus on excellence in research, teaching, and external impact. We believe that this approach will be reflected in good ranking.
What have you done to continue as number one in India for your PGP?
Specifically, with respect to our two-year PGP in Management, leading to the award of an MBA degree, our consistent endeavour is to nurture innovative global business leaders, entrepreneurs, and social change agents through holistic and transformative education.
Towards this end, the PGP recently went through a comprehensive review which resulted in some re-design to emphasise digital, data, and ESG in the curriculum. We are also working to integrate MOOCs content with our classroom sessions where appropriate to enhance learning effectiveness.
What are the parameters that FT has rated IIMB on?
The FT MiM ranking is based on 16 criteria. Alumni responses inform seven criteria: weighted salary (in $) salary percentage increase, value for money, career progress, career services – placement success, aims achieved, and international mobility. These responses together contribute to 59 per cent of the ranking’s total weight.
The remaining nine criteria — employed at three months, female faculty, female students, international course experience, women on the board, international faculty, faculty with doctorates, international students, and international board — are calculated from school data and given 41 per cent weightage.
How important are rankings — from an institute and a student perspective?
Rankings represent a strong external validation of the relevance and excellence of our programme. In conjunction with accreditation, these offer external stakeholders’ reiteration of the quality of our programme. Internally, a good rank is a recognition of the efforts put in by all our students, staff and faculty and is a source of motivation and positive energy.
What are IIMB’s plans for the year to push your global rankings?
Our re-designed PGP programme will, we believe, make our MBA graduates even better prepared to meet the needs of the best employers. Our PGP students will also be able to register for the basket of courses specially designed for the MBA in Business Analytics that we started two years ago, thereby making them particularly well suited to the digital businesses of today.
We continue to recruit some of the best faculty who have doctoral qualifications from the world’s best institutions and complement them with highly qualified Professors of Practice and adjunct faculty so that our students get an excellent blend of theory and practice.
The institute’s Centre for Teaching and Learning works closely with faculty to enable them to use the most contemporary and effective teaching methods. Our strong presence in online and digital education enables us to blend different teaching approaches wherever relevant and possible. We expect all these endeavours to show results in the years ahead.