Undergraduate students baffled by IIM-Indore notice

The ambitious five-year integrated programme offered by the Indian Institute of Management-Indore (IIM-I) has left its takers astonished. After being selected to the first-ever programme that opens doors to an IIM after high school, the institute has said that all those selected will have to pursue a graduation degree on the side.

This has left them all worried about the standing of the IIM-I’s course. The letter sent out by the IIM-I Director N. Ravichadran, to those who’ve been picked to join the programme, states, “Pursuing a degree in the first three years by distance education mode while they are on the IIM Indore campus is a reality.” This has left candidates and their parents equally rattled. Doing their bit, IIM-I is also in talks with Indian and international universities who would join hands with it to jointly offer this course.

The five-year residential Integrated Programme in Management was initially designed in such a way that students could drop out after the degree course. But the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) nixed that plan by disallowing the institute to modify its governing Societies Act, which states that the IIMs are postgraduate schools. So, the exit route after three years was closed.

The course was touted to be a rigorous one, designed to be a mix of essential skill subjects – maths and statistics, history, literature and political science, biological sciences, languages, finance and accounting, economics and information technology.

Now, students will have to pursue a graduation degree on the side too. “The decision was taken after we realised that Indians are obsessed by the idea of a degree,” said a faculty. IIM-Indore officials were inundated with queries from parents about the validity of this five-year course that does not give a degree to their wards, forcing the IIM-I Director to clarify that the institute “is not empowered to give degree for any academic programme”.

Source: The Times of India, October 16, 2011