Dr Bakul Dholakia, former director of IIM Ahmedabad, and now the Director General of International Management Institute, talks to SANGEETA YADAV about how he is going to make IMI the No 1 management institute in the country
What prompted you to move from IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to IMIIJ
like IIM-A, this institute is a fully integrated business school with a complete range of courses in every sector of business education market. This includes two-year MBA programme, two-year MBA programme in Banking and HR, one-year MBA (executive development programme), PhD programme and SDPs (short duration programme), research and consulting. Having such a spectrum of courses is very rare in B-schools.
Second, when I joined IIMA in 2002, it was ranked No. 2, since then IIM-A has been consistently at No. 1. My mission is to make IMI the top private business school in the country.
How are you going to realise this dreamIJ
As an integrated business school, it has the potential in every field and this has to be utilised. All the experiences that I had in IIM-A, I’ll be applying here as well. The good thing is that out of the 60 per cent of the faculty, 90 per cent are PhD holders. There are not many institutes in the country where you’ll find 90 per cent of the faculty who have done their PhD. They have research potential. I’m going to utilise the faulty talent and infrastructure and get the highest output from the existing resources.
Tell us about the one-year executive programmeIJ
One year MBA course is designed for a sponsored programme. Public sector companies like NTPC and ONGC send their candidates who sign a bond for a year to come and study at IMI. We train them and then they go back to their company with a qualification.
Any new course that you would like to bring in IMIIJ
I want to introduce one-year programme for a large number of students who want to do MBA but don't get admission in a good institution. So rather than going to C-category business schools, they decided to take up jobs. After 5-7 years of experience, they want to come back and do an MBA which happens in the west.
Since the admission season has just started, I’ve already restructured the course and opened it up to self-sponsored students. At present, the programme runs without placement because it’s fully sponsored. Now, by opening it up, I’m undertaking the responsibility of placement assistance.
What about the PhD programmesIJ
This institute runs PhD which is typically for the working executives and not on a full time basis. I’ve already constituted a committee which will work on restructuring the PhD fellow programme and convert it into a full-time five-year residential programme. If you want to do PhD you must be an MBA student. IIM-A is full-time PhD restructure of produce quality PhDs. If I take the first batch in 2015, the first output will come in 2020. But at least a beginning has been made.
What about large number of MBA institutes in IndiaIJ
Ten years back, the number of MBA institutes that were approved by AICTE was less than 2,000. Today, it’s more than 4,000. Unfortunately, the AICTE approval means licence to start but these institutes have not maintained the quality.
As a result what has happened is that out of the 4,000 MBA institutes, there are almost 2,500 institutes are unable to place even 20 per cent of their students.
Students have now become aware of which institute is genuine and which ones are making false promises. When there will be no one taking an admission at their institute, these B-Schools will have no option but to do a rethink and provide good quality education.