The recent announcement by the government that IIMs will be allowed to award an ‘MBA’ degree instead of the historic ‘PGDM’, has set the cat among the pigeons.
It is a well-known fact that while PGDM (post-graduate diploma in management) is a strange nomenclature that many foreign universities still struggle to figure out the meaning of, it is also the most recognised and respected management studies diploma in India (MBA/MMS don’t seem to make as much music to corporate and student ears).
The credit for this single-handedly goes to the IIMs. When these premier institutes began, they realised that not being a University would mean they couldn’t award a Masters degree. And thus was born the PGDM.
Popular choice
The private, standalone management schools that were set up in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s had two choices — either be affiliated to a local university and call their programme MBA, or go the IIM route and name it PGDM. Many followed the latter.
In the 1990s, this got a further boost as an AICTE affiliation enabled the PGDM to be treated as an equivalent of an MBA for official and legal purposes.
Today, almost 80 per cent of institutions ranked among the top 25 in any business school rankings, award a PGDM. You hardly find ‘MBA’ awarding institutions on that list. The autonomy to design and deliver did this magic.
Nothing lasts forever
But nothing lasts forever. While, on the one hand, institutions under the AICTE started protesting and complaining about the claustrophobic grip the statutory body held them in, on the other, they now face the spectre of IIMs going out of the PGDM group and into the MBA set. This has created such a panic among PGDM institutions that it has to be seen to be believed.
I recently attended a hurriedly-called conference of private institutions awarding PGDMs, and the predominant fear was that once IIMs cease to award the PGDM, the brand value of the PG diploma would fall. It was quite interesting to note that some of the best known private and autonomous institutions participating in the meeting expressed deep concerns about this development.
What is ironic is that many of the institutions that were up in arms against the hegemony of the AICTE and other government regulators (rightly so), are now looking to them to help resurrect the image and fight the possible brand erosion of the PGDM. They are appealing to the government and regulatory bodies to step in and allow PGDM institutions to award the much-derided MBA degree.
An opportunity?
But in this entire melee, what hardly got discussed was the possibility of looking at this self-declared ‘crisis’ as an opportunity. An opportunity to re-look and question:
What one is doing with the autonomy?
What we can do to revamp curriculum, design, faculty and pedagogy?
How do we redefine our relations with industry to take it beyond a mere transactional and placement-oriented approach?
How do we innovate to improve rigour and relevance and make learning contemporary?
In a nutshell, how do we leverage this challenge to redefine management education, which has been in crisis for more than a decade now? The institutions would do well to dwell upon these pertinent questions, and come up with substantial solutions.