B-schools struggle

B-schools struggle to attract students into academics


IIM-B has also set a target for students to produce two research papers of publishing quality during the duration of the course



Bangalore: Sumit Bakshi, 30, will don a graduation gown and receive his PhD in management studies from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), in April. But the computer engineer says he ended up in academic research “by accident”—one that he has already moved to correct.






Quality upgrade: Gopal Naik (right), chairperson, fellow programme in management, IIM Bangalore, with his students. The country’s business schools are tweaking their curricula to promote academic research. Jagadeesh NV/Mint
Like most of his classmates, Bakshi has taken up a corporate job, as manager of special projects with a United Arab Emirates-based money exchange and remittance firm. “I chose a corporate job because I want hands-on experience,” he says.


Bakshi is a classic case of a student who found his way into doctoral research without aptitude or interest. But with a degree from a prestigious institute such as IIM, such students have little trouble finding an exit route.


Virtually every PhD student at IIM-B has taken up a corporate job in the last few years—three out of four in 2009, six out of eight in 2008 and seven out of eight in 2007. The story isn’t vastly different at other management campuses either.


The fallout is an acute dearth of teachers for degree courses in management research, and the consequent inability of India’s premier institutes to break into the lists of top global management schools.


Bakshi says he completed his engineering degree soon after the dotcom bust of 2001. Jobs were scarce, so he took up a teaching position at an engineering college for two years before wandering into IIM’s PhD programme.


“You can never have money in academics,” he says, explaining his exit. He adds that he will earn five times more in his corporate job compared with that of an assistant professor, whose monthly salary is Rs25,000.


Additionally, those in academics are burdened with administrative duties and an excessive amount of teaching work, leaving little time for research, adds Bakshi.


A. Vinay Kumar, professor and chairman, fellow programme in management, IIM Lucknow, agrees with Bakshi.


“There is a demand from industry for PhD students, and remuneration-wise, it (corporate sector) is much more rewarding,” says Kumar, who loses 30-40% of his PhD students to corporate jobs.


The exodus has led to a severe faculty shortage at IIMs, which currently have 388 teachers against 468 positions.


To keep students rooted to careers in academic research, business schools such as IIM-B, IIM Lucknow and the Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur, among others, are tweaking their PhD curricula and offering other incentives.


Until recently, the first-year curriculum of a doctorate programme was a copy of a postgraduate programme in management. But IIM-B and IIM Lucknow introduced courses in research methodology and structural modelling in 2009, while XLRI did the same a year earlier.
VIJAY POPAT