Indian Institutes of Management
The Indian Institutes of Management are institutes of management education and research in India. They primarily offer undergraduate/postgraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and executive education programmes along with some additional courses. The establishment of IIMs was initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, based on the recommendation of the Planning Commission of India.
IIMs were declared institutions of national importance by the Ministry of Human Resource Development after the passage of Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017. By this act, IIMs were given more autonomy in handling their day-to-day operations. The act changed the IIM governing body from the IIM council to an IIM coordination forum. IIMs were granted much leeway to decide their courses, fees and other related matters. Top IIMs—such as IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Banglore and IIM Calcutta —have achieved top 10 rankings among management schools, according to the National Institutional Ranking Framework used by the HRD minister of India.
The two-year Post Graduate Programme in Management, offering the Master of Business Administration, is the flagship programme across all IIMs. These post-graduate programmes are considered the equivalent of regular MBA programmes. However, since the passage of IIM Act, all IIMs have started offering Master in Business Administration. Some IIMs also offer a one-year post-graduate programme for graduates with more work experience. Some IIMs offer the Fellow Programme in Management, a doctoral programme. The fellowship is considered to be equivalent to a DBA globally. Most IIMs also offer short-term executive education/Executive MBA courses and part-time programmes. Some IIMs also offer unique programs, like IIM Rohtak and IIM Indore's Five Year Integrated Programme in Management and IIM Lucknow's Working Managers' Programme of two years.
Institutes
| Name | Photo | Short Name | Established | Location | State/UT | Website | Notes |
| First generation | First generation | First generation | First generation | First generation | First generation | First generation | First generation |
| Indian Institute of Management Calcutta | IIM-C | 1961 | Kolkata | West Bengal | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad | IIM-A | 1961 | Ahmedabad | Gujarat | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Bangalore | IIM-B | 1973 | Bangalore | Karnataka | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Lucknow | IIM-L | 1984 | Lucknow | Uttar Pradesh | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode | IIM-K | 1996 | Kozhikode | Kerala | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Indore | IIM-I | 1996 | Indore | Madhya Pradesh | |||
| Second generation | Second generation | Second generation | Second generation | Second generation | Second generation | Second generation | Second generation |
| Indian Institute of Management Shillong | IIM-S | 2007 | Shillong | Meghalaya | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Rohtak | IIM-R | 2010 | Rohtak | Haryana | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Ranchi | IIM-Ranchi | 2010 | Ranchi | Jharkhand | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Raipur | IIM-Raipur | 2010 | Raipur | Chhattisgarh | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli | IIM-T | 2011 | Tiruchirappalli | Tamil Nadu | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Kashipur | IIM-Kashipur | 2011 | Kashipur | Uttarakhand | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Udaipur | IIM-U | 2011 | Udaipur | Rajasthan | |||
| Third generation | Third generation | Third generation | Third generation | Third generation | Third generation | Third generation | Third generation |
| Indian Institute of Management Nagpur | IIM-N | 2015 | Nagpur | Maharashtra | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Amritsar | IIM Amritsar | 2015 | Amritsar | Punjab | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Bodh Gaya | IIM-BG | 2015 | Bodh Gaya | Bihar | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Sirmaur | IIM Sirmaur | 2015 | Sirmaur district | Himachal Pradesh | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Visakhapatnam | IIM-V | 2015 | Visakhapatnam | Andhra Pradesh | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Sambalpur | IIM Sambalpur | 2015 | Sambalpur | Odisha | |||
| Indian Institute of Management Jammu | IIM Jammu | 2016 | Jammu | Jammu and Kashmir |
History
After India became independent in 1947, the Planning Commission was entrusted to oversee and direct the development of the nation. India grew rapidly in the 1950s, and in the late 1950s the Commission started facing difficulties in finding suitable managers for the large number of public sector enterprises that were being established in India as a part of its industrial policy. To solve this problem, the Planning Commission in 1959 invited Professor George Robbins of UCLA to help in setting up an All India Institute of Management Studies. Based on his recommendations, the Indian government decided to set up two elite management institutes, named Indian Institutes of Management. Calcutta and Ahmedabad were chosen as the locations for the two new institutes.The institute at Calcutta was established first, on 13 November 1961, and was named Indian Institute of Management Calcutta or IIM Calcutta. It was set up in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the government of West Bengal, the Ford Foundation, and Indian industry. The institute at Ahmedabad was established in the following month and was named the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Like MIT Sloan in the case of IIM Calcutta, Harvard Business School played an important role in the initial stages of IIM Ahmedabad.
In 1972, a committee headed by Ravi J. Matthai took note of the success of the two established IIMs and recommended the setting up of two more IIMs. Based on the committee's recommendation, a new IIM, originally intended to cater exclusively to the needs of public sector enterprises, was established in Bangalore the next year. In 1981, the first IIM Review Committee was convened to examine the progress of the three existing IIMs and to make recommendations. The committee noted that the three IIMs were producing around 400 PGP graduates every year and that they had reached their optimum capacity. It proposed the opening of two more IIMs to meet the rising demand for management professionals. It also recommended expanding the Fellowship programmes, similar to PhD programmes, to meet the growing demand for faculty in management schools in India. The fourth IIM, IIM Lucknow, was established in 1984 based on the committee's recommendation.
Two more IIMs, the fifth and sixth, were established at Kozhikode and Indore in 1996. IIM Shillong was the seventh IIM to be established, following a 2005 decision by the Government of India; its foundation stone was laid on 1 December 2007; and its first academic session was 2008–09. Since 2007, fourteen new IIMs have been set up, bringing the total number of IIMs to 20, IIM-Jammu being the latest one, starting in 2016.
The Union Cabinet, on 24 January 2017, approved the bill that became the Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017, which declares IIMs as Institutes of National Importance and enables them to grant degrees and to further make other important changes to the institute. The IIM bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 28 July 2017 and by the Rajya Sabha on 19 December 2017. After receiving presidential assent, the IIM bill became an Act on 31 December 2017.
Academics
The IIMs mainly offer undergraduate/postgraduate, postgraduate, doctoral, and executive education programmes. Some programmes offered by all IIMs are similar; however, some IIMs offer unique programmes for specialised purposes.Postgraduate education
All IIMs offer a two-year full-time Post Graduate Programme in Management, equivalent to a Master of Business Administration degree. The programme is considered the flagship programme of IIMs, and awards the Master of Business Administration to successful candidates. Since 2018, all the IIMs have started granting MBA degrees for this flagship program.This programme is usually structured into six trimesters spread across two years, starting in June and running until April of the second year. The first year coursework generally consists of core courses in various management disciplines, while in the second year students are allowed to select courses from an exhaustive list of electives. The PGP is a general, fully integrated management programme with no specialisation, and typically includes courses in accounting, behavioural science, finance, economics, human-resource management, management sciences and information technology, marketing, business operations, business mathematics, public policy, statistics and decision analysis, strategy, and general management.
Since 2006, some IIMs have started offering one-year, full-time post graduate programmes for professionals having approximately 5 years or more of work experience. This program was necessitated because the normal 2-year program is primarily aimed at new graduates or graduates with less than 4–5 years of work experience. These 1 years programmes are general, fully integrated management programmes with no specialization, and typically include the same courses as offered in a typical 2-year MBA program. These intensive programmes typically require 75 credits or around 750 hours of classroom teaching along with projects and other coursework as in a normal, global 2-year MBA program.
Designed as a regular MBA programme, which focuses on using the prior work experience of the students, the one-year Executive MBA is named differently by different IIMs. It is called the Post Graduate Program for Executives at IIM Calcutta and IIM Shillong, and at IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Udaipur. It is called the Executive Post Graduate Programme at IIM Bangalore and IIM Indore, and the International Programme in Management for Executives at IIM Lucknow. The exact structure, admission criteria, and other details of these programmes vary. However, all these programmes admit only candidates with approximately 5 or more years of professional experience and usually use a combination of GMAT score, essays, and personal interviews as entry criteria, similar to other globally reputed MBA programmes. The median GMAT score of the batches at IIM Bangalore is usually around 710.
Other than these general variants, many IIMs offer specialty programmes built which focus on different areas, e.g. Post Graduate Programme in Sustainable Management at IIM Lucknow, Post Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management at IIM Ranchi and many more.
Five-year Integrated Programme (Undergraduate/Postgraduate education)
Two IIMs, IIM Indore and IIM Rohtak also offer integrated programs which spans for five years. Students join this program just after finishing their school. The program is called IPM at both the institutes. The course structures are similar though not same at both the institutes. For the first three years, they are taught a combination of "statistics, economics and humanities", making them unique in their way. The last two years, they undergo the program with PGP students at their respective institutes. IIM Indore first started this program in 2011 and thereby became the first IIM to have a bachelors program. Four batches of IIM Indore's IPM have been graduated and inducted in the industry. IIM Rohtak has launched this program in 2019 and the first batch is expected to graduate in 2024. IIM Indore offers BBA and MBA to the graduates of this program. IIM Rohtak has decided to offer Master of Business Administration to five-year graduates and Bachelor of Business Administration to students who opt-out after three years.Doctoral education
IIMs offer a Fellow Programme in Management as a full-time Doctor of Business Administration Programme. This programme is aimed at preparing students for careers in teaching or research in different disciplines of management, as well as for careers outside academics that demand a high degree of investigative and analytical ability. A student who completes this programme at any IIM, where he is registered as a doctoral scholar, is awarded the title of Fellow of that institute. This Fellow Programme is equivalent to the Doctor of Business Administration degree. Students receiving such a fellowship every year, across all IIMs, work in close association with one another in specific research areas of their choice.Executive education
Many IIMs offer Executive MBA programme targeted at working professionals. These are often short-term or part-time programmes and are known by various names such as Management Development Programme, Advanced Masters Program in Management of Global Enterprises, and Executive General Management Programme. The certificate programmes at IIMs are not considered as equivalent to an Executive MBA offered by the IIMs. Only the diploma-level programmes are considered as equivalent, depending on whether it is full-time or part-time. Many IIMs—such as IIMC, IIMB, IIMK, IIM Kashipur, and IIM Rohtak—have partnered with third-party companies to enable these courses to be provided under a distributed model.Other programmes
Some IIMs offer specialised programmes targeted at various management segments. IIM Ahmedabad offers a six-month, full-time programme called the Armed Forces Programme aimed at military personnel. IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore offer full-time programmes in public management and are called the Post Graduate Programme in Public Management and Policy and Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy Management, respectively. IIM Bangalore offers a two-year, part-time programme called the Post-Graduate Programme in Software Enterprise Management, an executive general-management education programme designed for the specific needs of professionals working in the software and information-technology industry. IIM Indore offers a 5-year Integrated Programme in Management that leads to a combined undergraduate-cum-graduate diploma. IIM Ranchi is the first and only IIM to offer a full-time Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management programme. IIM Bangalore offers a two-year Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship to "promote skill development in district economies".Admission process
Different programmes of IIMs follow different admission processes. Admission for residents of India to the flagship two-year PGP programmes at all IIMs is based on the Common Admission Test. CAT scores are often used as the primary short-listing criteria for admissions. International/overseas applicants have the option to apply using GMAT scores in lieu of CAT scores. GMAT scores are a prerequisite short-listing criteria used for admission to the one-year full-time programme for experienced executives. Test requirements for doctoral programmes vary. Some IIMs require candidates to make a presentation of a broad research idea or take a Research Aptitude Test followed by round of interviews while all are compelled to accept scores on standardised tests such as the CAT, GATE, GMAT, and GRE. The overall profiles of candidates, including past academic and professional accomplishments, are considered for all programmes, along with valid standard test scores. Some programmes require essays and academic or professional recommendations. The final round of admission evaluations involve an interview, before which some IIMs conduct other evaluation processes like written assessment tests and group discussions.Entrance exam
The Common Admission Test is a management aptitude test conducted by the IIMs primarily as an evaluation tool for admission to their two-year PGP programmes. It is widely considered as one of the most competitive exams in the world, with a success rate of around one in two hundred. Even with the recent addition of new colleges, in 2013 the acceptance rate at IIMs was 1.714%, one of the lowest in the world.Originally conducted as a paper-and-pencil test given on a particular date all over India, in 2009 CAT began being given as a computer-based assessment operated by Prometric. In 2014, TCS received a 5-year contract to conduct the test. The online test is now given over a period of a few weeks.
In August 2011, the six newer IIMs announced that in the coming year they will replace the group-discussion round with a common written analysis test to evaluate communication and comprehension skill. The seven older IIMs did not announce plans to change the admission process.
The admissions for the two-year full-time programme is done by shortlisting based on GMAT scores in conjunction with candidate profile suitability. This is followed by evaluation of essays and a panel-interview round. The quality of prior work experience and future leadership potential is a critical factor in the selections.