NEW DELHI: With the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bill, 2017, getting Presidential assent and becoming an Act this Sunday, the centrally funded prestigious B-Schools in the country are set to start the process of mutual consultation to arrive at uniform regulations to govern their functioning.
To build consensus on issues of common interest and operations at IIMs, the Act provides for a coordination forum that will allow the institutes to discuss these matters and assist one another.
This is meant to be an advisory body, headed by an “eminent person” chosen through a search cum selection committee and will have a total of 33 members.
According to sources at many of the 20 IIMs in the country, discussions on common guidelines are through a co-ordination forum, as mandated in the Act that will be important to ensure the regulations do not vary too much across the institutes.
“With the passage of the IIM bill, it’s immediately required that we all sit together and put in place common norms for all the institutes so that we are not too different from one another. The discussion and consultation process will begin at once,” a senior official at IIM Bangalore told this newspaper.
The IIM directors, currently do meet together occasionally to discuss issues of common interests and learn best practices from each other but are not part of a single official platform.
This, however, in practice means that most IIMs decide on their own based on the broad guidelines given by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.
“For example, there is a rule on promoting gender parity in institutes but the weightage given to students who are female or third gender varies from institute to institute and it can be really confusing for the students,” said an official in the higher education department of the HRD ministry.
“All this will change once the co-ordination forum starts coming up with its suggestions.”
The IIM Act declares 20 IIMs as Institutes of National Importance and confers on them the power to grant degrees instead of post-graduate diplomas and doctorates instead of fellowships. It will also give the institute’s greater administrative, academic and financial autonomy.
The Act also seeks to delegate the board of governors with greater power.