IIM students, alumni petition PM Modi to change MBA degree criteria

As the government prepares a new set of norms for IIMs, over 400 alumni members and students of these prestigious business schools have petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make changes in the criteria for awarding of MBA degrees in the country.

To ensure that the degrees awarded to IIM students are at par with the global standards, they have said that Masters in Business Administration (MBA) degree should be given only for one-year programmes and the two-year courses should be for the Masters in Business Management (MBM).

The petition, to the Prime Minister Modi and to the Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, have been made through 'oneyearMBA.co.in' and the petitioners include alumni and students from IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Indore and Lucknow, among others.

The government is looking to usher in significant changes in the ways the premier IIMs are governed and it plans to come up with a new legislation in this regard, while a draft bill has already been put up for the public consultations.

The petition by 'oneyearMBA.co.in', which presents itself as 'a leading resource for news, guidance and analysis on one-year MBA programmes', has asked the government to "ensure that MBA degree at IIMs is awarded to one-year MBA while MBM degrees is awarded to two-year post graduate programmes".

The website's founder Shikhar Mohan said that the petition has been submitted through the Modi government's MyGov.In platform, where the draft IIM bill has been put for the public consultation process.

Besides, physical copies of the petition are being sent to the Prime Minister and the HRD Minister, he added.

The petitioners have said that continuing to award MBA degrees for two-year programmes would have multiple negative ramifications including on the competitiveness of IIMs.

"If the IIMs now award an MBA for a course that does not meet international criteria for being called one, they will be compromising their credibility," the petition said.

It further says that the Association of Universities (AoU) awards an MBA equivalent status to two-year post graduate programmes offered by the IIMs without work experience.

However, such courses are considered as pre-experience MBM by the AMBA (Association of MBAs), a global education accreditation agency.

According to the petition, only one year MBA courses at IIMs that stipulate a minimum of five years of work experience as an eligibility requirement meet global norms for an MBA programme and are accredited as full-time MBAs by the AMBA.

"Since the two-year post graduate programmes at IIMs largely recruit freshers (most have less than a year of work experience and many even have zero-work experience), these courses are accredited by the AMBA as MBMs," it noted.