IIMs to now offer Degrees in place of Diplomas

Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will now award degrees instead of diplomas to the students. A committee has been set up by the MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development) to draft an IIM Act which would help these institutes get recognition from the Parliament and issue degrees to their students.

Presently, the IIMs can award only a PGDM (Post Graduate Diplomas in Management) since they are registered as societies. The IIM act that has been proposed is similar to the Institutes of Technology Act as per which the IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) function. As per a ministry official the draft has been refined for quite some time now. However, the context and technology will be different for the same since IIMs are only post graduate institutes and IITs are postgraduate as well as PG level institutes. This step is expected to convert IIMs into institutes with national importance.

Out of the 13 IIMs across the country 6 are old and the other 7 have been established recently. Each IIM functions under their respective MoAs(Memorandum of Associations) and the guidelines provided by them. The IIMs are societies registered under the Societies Registration Act and do not rely on funding by the government for their operations.

As per the ministry, bringing the IIMs within the jurisdiction of Central government will not make them less accountable to the parliament and their status of a public institution will not change. However, the IIMs are concerned about their autonomy and were not quite keen to accept the Act since most of them believed that the Act would dilute PGDM program’s image on the whole. But with time most of the IIMs understood the importance of the Act while considering global recognition. The degree granting status is expected to empower the IIMs and help them collaborate with the international universities.

Source: The Indian Express