IS BRAND IIT-IIM WANING?
IIT, IIM: these magical letters have
launched several thousand I corporate careers, shaped the destiny of Corporate
India and even boosted literary careers and marriage prospects. But is the
magic fading? A study by executive search firm EMA Partners revealed that only
28% of CEOs of India Inc's top 200 companies had an IIT, IIM qualification.
“It's certainly a diminishing
trend,“ says K Sudarshan, regional managing partner, Asia, EMA Partners. A similar
study done by EMA Partners in 2009 had revealed that half of India Inc's top
CEO either had an IIT or IIM degree. Sudarshan recalls instances of HR heads of
some MNC companies in the FMCG insisting on an IIM(A) degree as a
prequalification. That, he says, is a matter of the past. (see article below:
Losing the magic touch?) Even as IITs and IIMs struggled to meet the demand of
a booming economy in the mid-2000s, other institutes stepped up to fill the
gap. “Graduates of IITs and IIMs are becoming a smaller and smaller part of
India's knowledge ecosystem,“ says Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global
Education and former Infosys board member. “Of the 30 million students in
colleges, eight million graduate annually. The IIMs would be graduating
2,5003,000 and IITs about 10,000. Twenty-thirty years back, when the education
system was smaller, the best people went to IITs. Now there's a 50% reservation
in IITs and IIMs. So many people are applying and you have to go through a
cramming test to enter these places.“
It's an argument Vineet Nayar,
former CEO of HCL Technologies, sees a lot of merit in.“The effort required to
get into an IIM or IIT is so intense that exhaustion sets in,“ he says.
“Because of that we are getting a lot of people into companies from IITs and
IIMs who don't want to work after the two years because they have an
entitlement mindset.“ Another interesting insight: just over a third (34%) of
all CEOs with IIM degrees are in the consumer retail space. “The IIT and IIM
grads have all been in the system for the last 20 years and were hired two
decades back. At that time, FMCG was king. Today, the best would join
consulting firms. It's the newer, younger companies where IIT and IIM graduates
are not CEOs,“ says Pai.
CDET24APR15
No comments:
Post a Comment