Consensus emerging among IIMs on jointly setting up campus abroad

“IIM-A,IIM-B and IIM-C are at par with each other. I do not believe in any kind of rankings for them. I have no problem if they come together,” Professor Barua said at the sidelines of a joint seminar on the future of management education,organised at the IIM-C on Friday.

“We have been there for 50 years but have never collaborated,” IIM-A director said.

Barua said IIM-A has been considering to set up campus at Singapore or Dubai but it involved very high costs. He said if the three IIMs joined hands,it would help the matter. He said once the institutes got the much-awaited operational autonomy they would go for setting up campus abroad.

He said operational autonomy was required to help them compete with foreign institutes which are likely to set up their base in the country soon. He added they were open to corporate funding for setting up campus abroad.

According to him,the institutes can be given operational autonomy for 10 years and then an evaluation can be done by a separate committee before it is extended further. However,there was a need to make a distinction between the old IIMs and the new ones,he said.

The three old IIMs – IIM- A,IIM-B and IIM-C – have already been given financial autonomy early in the last decade.

“There is much more than doing CAT together. We have been doing CAT for almost thirty years,” said Professor Sekhar Chowdhury,IIM-C director.