IIM-A makes three courses expensive, redesigns curriculum

Ahmedabad: India’s premier business school Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) announced a fee hike ranging from Rs 1.9 lakh to 2.5 lakh for three of its flagship courses. Courses whose fees have been hiked include Post-Graduate Programme in Management (PGP), PGP-Agri Business Management (PGP-ABM) and PGP for Executives (PGPX). The new fee structure would be implemented from the next batch of 2015-17, IIM-A director Ashish Nanda said. [caption id=“attachment_1809409” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Students attending a convocation at IIM-Ahmedabad. Reuters[/caption] “For PGP and PGP-ABM, which are both two-year courses, the fee will increase from Rs 16.6 lakh to Rs 18.5 lakh. The one-year PGPX course fee has also being raised from Rs 21.5 lakh to Rs 24 lakh for the batch commencing from April 2015,” Nanda announced during a press conference in Ahmedabad today. With this hike, which came after a gap of two years, IIM-A has become the first IIM in the country to hike its fee in two years, Nanda said. “To remain financially self sufficient, the institute needs to raise its fees. For PGP and PGP-ABM programmes, the tuition fee hike is 10 per cent, whereas our administration costs are high due to inflation. The cumulative fee hike for all three programmes is about 11 percent,” Nanda said. Besides fees, Nanda also announced several innovations and changes in IIM-A’s existing programmes and admission rules, effective from next year. As per recommendations of the PGP-ABM review committee, IIM-A has decided to restructure it and rename it as PGP-FABM (Food and Agri Business Management) from next year onwards, PGP-FABM programme chair Vijay Paul Sharma said. “With the emergence of processed food industry in recent times, the programme curriculum has been redesigned to address emerging needs of the food and agri-business sector. We are also opening up the programme to non-agriculture background students to make it more diverse in terms of academic backgrounds,” Sharma said. Apart from renaming the programme, two new courses namely Agricultural Systems and Rural, Social and Institutional Environment, are being introduced in the first year of PGP-FABM. During the programme’s second year, new elective courses on agribusiness project management, agribusiness entrepreneurship, agribusiness leadership, food supply chain management, food retailing and others would be offered, Sharma said. IIM-A has made several changes in its PGP programme, including introduction of three new core courses namely Government Systems & Processes, Understanding Global Organisational Context, and Having an Entrepreneurial Mindset, Nanda said. On the admission front, IIM-A announced two major changes, including ‘deferred admission’ as per which, a selected number of students, who have already secured berths in IIM-A, would be given an opportunity to work for a couple of years before joining the PGP or the PGP-FABM course, Nanda said. “This system will encourage some of the bright admits, fresh out of college, to gain relevant experience before joining IIM-A. We will hold their seat for one to two years and give them admission after they gain experience. However, we are yet to finalise the specifics of this system,” Nanda said. In another major change in admission norms, IIM-A plans to introduce ‘supernumerary seats’ for foreign nationals from next year. According to Nanda, IIM-A would offer these seats over its present capacity to foreign students who wish to join its PGP course. “At present, we have very few foreign students. Our objective is to get quality foreign students to bring diversity, and also to position the institute as a global learning destination for management studies,” Nanda said. PTI