The Business School Landscape In India: Challenges & The Need For Global Visibility

With around 3,500 schools, India’s business school sector is diverse and rapidly growing. However, only a few of those schools are recognized on a global scale — and only around 29 are internationally accredited (AACSB, EQUIS) institutions. Even fewer — 14 — appear in The Financial Times rankings.

The majority of business schools in India face major challenges in terms of quality, visibility, and alignment with global standards. Even though the India’s B-schools find themselves in a highly competitive market, the top schools get a large pool applicants (329,000) for limited number of seats (annual intakes of around 5,000).

Until recently, the top B-schools in India had limited incentive to increase their visibility and credibility on the world stage. However, increased globalization and competition has made recognition on the global stage a key imperative for India’s management education sector.

The Rise of Business Schools in India

Management education in India is a relatively new phenomenon. The Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management was set up in 1953 as India’s first official management institute in Calcutta. The government of India received a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1961 to launch IIM Calcutta and IIM Ahmedabad. IIMC was established in collaboration with the Sloan School of Management at MIT and IIMA with Harvard Business School. With the support of expertise developed by the pioneering IIMs, two more IIMs were founded — IIM Bangalore in 1973, and IIM Lucknow in 1984.

In 1991, the number of approved management education institutions in India was only about 130, with an annual MBA intake of about 12,000, comprising 8,000 full-time, 3,000 part-time and 1,000 distance education students. In the late 1990s two additional IIMs, IIM Kozhikode and IIM Indore, were established. India today has a total of around 3,500 B-schools, including 21 IIMs.

Business education in India has witnessed exponential growth over the last few decades. With the liberalization of the economy in the 1990s, there was a marked increase in the demand for management professionals, which fuelled the establishment of numerous business schools. Today, the Indian business school landscape comprises a mix of public institutions, such as the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), university departments, colleges affiliated to universities, management departments of IITs and private institutions. However, the sheer number of these institutions does not necessarily reflect quality or global competitiveness.

Challenges with Accreditation and Quality

The world’s eyes are focused firmly on India as it grows economically and socially at a breakneck pace. This growth is predicted to last into the next decade at the very least. There is a need for talent which is globally attuned to manage and lead Indian businesses and global companies entering India.

Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, Indian business schools are yet to grasp and take advantage of this opportunity. With a current focus on rote-based learning and outdated pedagogy, a large number of management graduates are not able to grab the immense career opportunities in India. It is in this context that the need for global collaborations and internationalization of Indian B-schools becomes very important.

Indian business schools today are in a difficult situation, constantly pressured to achieve global standards despite being relatively new entrants compared to their global counterparts:

First, they are faced with the emergence of ranking bodies and international accreditations. Here there is reliance on standardized assessment criteria, for which schools need to fulfill key performance metrics. For example, schools need to have at least 50% of courses delivered by research-productive, permanent faculty. This entails recruitment of research active permanent faculty, which pushes up the cost of education.

Second, the requirement for faculty to publish more heavily in academic journals results in faculty often focusing on research that may not always be relevant to practice or best prepare graduates for the job market.

Third, the emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) disrupts the market on the supply side and places business schools in a world where the very basis of knowledge transmission is fundamentally altered.

Fourth, amid all this Indian B-schools must confront the changing nature and needs of industry.

Given the challenges, business schools in India are forced into a race for prestige as reflected in international rankings and accreditations. Simultaneously, they are coping with the changing character and demands of industry through realignment of their curriculum, pedagogy, and approach to knowledge creation. And they are pushed toward research as a requirement for international accreditations and to enhance their brand equity, an expensive activity that makes funding necessary. Given the cost pressures, tuition fees at most institutions have risen exponentially, even in public-funded institutions like IIMs.

International rankings like The Financial Times and QS World University rankings have substantial weightage for class and faculty diversity in terms of international faculty, international students, and international board. This is a major challenge for Indian B-schools. The low number of accredited schools in the country implies that a significant portion of India’s B-schools are perceived to be not maintaining rigorous standards, which creates a challenge both for students and employers alike.

National Rankings & Their Limitations

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) is India’s primary ranking mechanism, aimed at evaluating higher-education institutions based on parameters like research, diversity, and perception. However, the NIRF rankings have not been entirely effective for business schools, as they fail to adequately capture specific factors crucial to business education, such as real-world impact, employability, and international connectivity.

For instance, a high NIRF ranking may indicate strong research output but may not necessarily reflect a school’s ability to equip students with skills that meet industry standards or its reputation among multinational corporations. This leaves room for ambiguity regarding the true quality of a school and does not provide a reliable benchmark for prospective students seeking globally recognized programs.

While NIRF assigns very high importance to research which can be debated, as focus in on quantity and not quality. The two other parameters that swing the results widely in favor of IIMs and IITs is “Perception” and “Outreach and Inclusivity.” NIRF has been widely criticized for measuring perception, when it has access to so much hard data, 

It is a foregone conclusion that public institutions like IITs and IIMs will always score high on perception even if they have been established in recent times. Factors like outreach and inclusivity too favours IIMs and other public institutions.

The intense competition for visibility within the NIRF framework has led to an increasing emphasis on metrics that may not align with a business school’s core strengths. As schools strive to improve their rankings, the focus sometimes shifts away from areas like experiential learning, innovative curriculum design, and industry engagement, which are crucial for holistic business education.

The Need for a Reliable Quality Indicator

In the absence of a dependable quality indicator that evaluates Indian business schools based on relevant and globally accepted parameters, both students and employers face challenges in identifying schools that meet international standards. This has led to a situation where a considerable number of Indian students choose to pursue business education abroad, often due to the perception that foreign institutions offer superior quality, global recognition, and better career prospects. For India, this “brain drain” is a significant loss, as many talented students do not return to contribute to the country’s economy.

THE Business School Register: A Potential Solution

The introduction of THE Business School Register could provide a much-needed platform for Indian business schools to gain global visibility and credibility. THE Business School Register is a global platform that recognizes and showcases institutions that meet certain standards of excellence, enabling them to reach a broader, international audience. For Indian business schools, this platform could serve as an invaluable tool to highlight their impact, achievements, and unique offerings to the world.

Through such a platform, Indian business schools can position themselves as competitive alternatives to foreign institutions, thereby retaining talented Indian students who might otherwise choose to study abroad. Moreover, by becoming part of a globally recognized register, these schools can demonstrate their commitment to quality and innovation, attracting not only domestic students but also international students and faculty, which would further elevate their standards and global reputation.

The number of business school in India have grown exponentially over the past two decades. Unfortunately, this has not resulted in a proportional growth in good quality management graduates coming out from most of these schools. Barring the top 100 business schools, the remaining schools struggle to keep up with international quality, accreditation and academic standards. The result is the churning out of a vast number o of business graduates who have little or no knowledge about the cutting edge, relevant and global business practices.

During recruitments, hiring managers are therefore unable to discern the potential value proposition of hiring these graduates and this has a direct impact on the career prospects of these graduates. The THE register would therefore be a great platform to share, collaborate and create long term peer structures amongst Indian business schools as they strive to improve the quality of teaching and enable their students to be truly competitive on a global scale.

Benefits of Global Visibility

The global visibility provided by THE Business School Register can also have a positive impact on Indian business schools’ connections with international industry partners and academic institutions. Collaboration with global corporations and foreign universities can lead to mutually beneficial partnerships, including faculty exchanges, research collaborations, and joint programs. These initiatives would not only enrich the academic environment but also provide students with a more diverse and holistic learning experience.

Additionally, by attracting a global audience, Indian business schools can showcase their role in contributing to society, fostering innovation, and driving economic growth. This, in turn, can enhance their reputation, both nationally and internationally, and help them build a strong brand as hubs of quality business education.

In a hyper-competitive landscape, where the large number of Indian B-schools are competing for the limited pool of candidates, there is an urgent need to create unique differentiating points for them to succeed. In an increasingly commoditized scenario, business schools need to create outstanding programs in order to attract the best talent – both quantitative and qualitative.

With a policy thrust on internationalization and global collaboration, creating a global visibility where business schools across the world can reach out to prospective Indian partner schools is a key necessity for growth. This becomes even more important given the opening up of India to international universities for setting up campuses in India. The THE register would be the ideal platform for Indian schools to be present, visible and available for global partnerships & collaborations.

Conclusion

India’s business school sector stands at a crucial juncture. While it has achieved considerable growth, it faces significant challenges in terms of quality assurance and global visibility. The limitations of national ranking frameworks and the scarcity of accredited institutions highlight the need for a reliable, globally recognized platform like THE Business School Register. By offering Indian business schools the opportunity to demonstrate their quality and impact on an international stage, THE Business School Register could foster a more competitive, visible, and credible business education sector in India, encouraging more Indian students to pursue their education domestically and driving the country’s broader ambitions of becoming a global knowledge hub.

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Ben Stévenin is director of business school solutions and partnerships for Times Higher Education, Poets&Quants‘ parent company. Dr. Atish Chattopadhyay is director of the Jagdish Sheth School of Management in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, and Professor Aditya Singh is the director of the Athena School of Management in Mumbai, India.

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