A classroom must be either fully online or fully offline; hybrid classes don’t work: Prof Errol D’Souza, Director, IIM Ahmedabad

Ten years ago, The Economist newsmagazine published an article titled ‘Sleepless in Ahmedabad’; a short profile of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, it noted that its students are “sickeningly clever” who “work disgustingly hard.” While the business world can vouch for their cleverness and hard work, Prof Errol D’Souza has been experiencing it first-hand for 21 years. Prof D’Souza joined IIMA in 2001, was appointed interim director in 2017 (after Prof Ashish Nanda resigned), and director in 2018. “It’s a crazy campus. Students play football at 1:00 in the morning and discuss global affairs,” he told FE. “It’s also a very involving campus—everyone is talking to every other person, and that leads to so many original (and shared) ideas getting developed.”

Learning set from the pandemic

While offline classes have fully started at IIMA, about 90% students have been on the campus since October. “They were studying online from campus lawns,” Prof D’Souza said. “In management education, it’s either fully online or fully offline; hybrid classes don’t work.” Deans from global business schools he has talked to share the same opinion. “There is a lot of interactive learning (in management education). In a hybrid classroom, the student sitting in front of the teacher may have more advantage as compared to the one studying online who may have poor connectivity or living at place with a lot of disturbance,” he said. The pandemic was a time for IIMA to rethink its coursework. It started a lot of new electives, including on digital marketing, digital strategy and digital transformation, on management of biopharmaceutical industry, one called blacks swans and grey rhinos (managing under crisis), and more. “We introduced courses that would benefit students studying in only-online mode,” Prof D’Souza said. “These new courses and this new thinking will stay.”

Global participation on the campus

Even though IIMA is a globally-renowned business school, the campus has limited international student participation. “By design, the Indian education system does not allow free and unlimited participation of foreign students,” Prof D’Souza said. “To counter that, we’ve introduced the concept of dual degree; we’ve partnered with half a dozen top foreign schools and their students attend first year at IIMA and ours at their campuses. That brings in some foreign students.” However, IIMA’s exchange programmes (with 75-odd foreign schools) turn the campus truly global during the September-December semester. Under this arrangement, IIMA students go abroad for a semester and students from partner schools come to India. Prof D’Souza said: “Last semester of the calendar year is when our campus becomes global in outlook and flavour—even the dinner is different cuisines every other day.”

Foreign students, local jobs

Some education experts argue that foreign students will come to India only if they are able to find local jobs. Prof D’Souza, however, said there are enough jobs. “50-60% of our dual degree foreign students end up working in India,” he said. “MNCs in India want their workforce to be global to some extent, and they hire them.”

Ranking slip

In the Financial Times Masters in Management ranking (MBA), IIMA slipped from 19th in 2018 to 26th in 2021; in the Financial Times Global MBA ranking (MBA-PGPX), IIMA slipped from 31st in 2018 to 48th in 2021 (even though in the domestic National Institutional Ranking Framework it has been on top). This, Prof D’Souza said, does bother IIMA but doesn’t budge it from its long-term goal. “A new component, called salary growth, was introduced a while ago—the ranking body measures the salary when a student graduates and then again after three years. That ‘growth’ has 20% weightage in rankings,” he said. “Our students start at a very high salary, and so their growth cannot be as high as that of the one who started lower. This is a conflict situation. But instead of getting bothered, we’ve focused on our long-term strategy, which is excellence in education, research and impacting the world of practice.”

Starting salary

Students of top IIMs in India start at a salary that can be twice that of a fresh graduate from a better ranked school. According to the FT MiM 2021 ranking, while IIMA two-year PGP students averaged $139,602 per year starting salary, those from London Business School averaged $102,198 and from other better ranked schools even lower. “The talent pool we get and the diversity of courses we offer is the best in the world,” Prof D’Souza said. “IIMA takes about 385 students in the two-year PGP and another 50 in agribusiness, offering them close to 140 electives. That’s a crazy breadth of electives which no school in the world offers. That’s also a reason so many foreign students want to study at IIMA. Recruiters understand here are the brightest guys.”

IIMA and MOOCs

While IIM Bangalore and IIT Bombay are big on massive open online courses (MOOCs), IIMA has taken a slower approach. “Online education is synchronous (live teaching) and asynchronous (MOOCs). We believe management education works best in synchronous mode, because it is participatory. But we also understand that MOOCs are getting popular, and we’re developing our own MOOCs, which we will launch this year, in participation with Coursera,” he said.

Women and management education

Traditionally, the participation of women students in certain areas such as engineering and management has been lower than in medicine and pharmacy. But some schools stand out. IIM Kozhikode, for example, due to its focused efforts, has close to 54% women in its flagship course, 30% as part of faculty and 40% in the Board of Governors (highest amongst IITs and IIMs). Prof D’Souza said that if the work environment enables women, they will come through the requisite programmes to join that work environment. “We are working with a few organisations to transform the workspace; if workspaces are gender-friendly, backward linkages will ensure not only us but other institutions will also get more women students,” he said. At the same time, female student participation at IIMA has been rising. “7-8 years ago it used to be 12-14%, but now it has gone up to 25-28%. In the banking and financial sectors in particular, women are showing a lot of interest.”

Letter to the Prime Minister

In January, according to The Indian Express, faculty and students of IIMs, including IIMA, wrote a letter to the PM, saying that his silence emboldens hate voices. “IIMA is an education institution, everybody has fundamental right to express,” Prof D’Souza said. “Ideas should never be censored or restricted; if you don’t like an idea, you can debate on it, but don’t sensor it. That’s my view.”