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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, autonomy is the right or condition of self-governance in a particular sphere; the capacity of an agent to act in accordance with objective morality rather than the influence of desires; and freedom from external control and influence. In short, autonomy is about freedom of action.
How is this meaning relevant in the context of the Indian Institutes of Management? The premier B-schools are fighting the government's decision to reduce their fees on the ground that lowering fees would increase the IIMs' dependence on government funding and, hence, lower its autonomy.
But what kind of autonomy are we talking about? Is it the liberty for non-performance and to make insignificant contributions to the field of management in general?
This seems to be the mantra of the dons, that is, the members of the cartel called the academic fraternity or faculty community at the IIMs.
People across the spectrum have been criticising the government for interfering in the affairs of the IIMs. I think the time is right to start a debate on how the IIMs have been performing in general and also on what has been the contribution of the faculty, which is considered a pillar of management education in the country.
Perhaps the crisis should be looked at from a different point of view. In fact, have we been asking the right questions?
The fundamental premise on which the IIMs are fighting is the significant reduction in autonomy to perform and operate. Does autonomy necessarily lead to excellence?
What has been the reason for the stupendous rise of the IIMs and their performance? Why is the government trying to reduce fees? What is the impact of fee reduction on the faculty of the institutes?
The IIMs have reached such heights due to the quality of the students who pass out from the institutes. And this quality is created not by the faculty of the institute but primarily by the admission process. The IIMs are known worldwide not for their intellectual capital -- the faculty -- but for the degree of difficulty in getting admission there.
Another clear reason for the awe-inspiring rise of the IIMs has been the time available to the alumni to operate in the business world. They have been a part of the corporate world for 40 years now. But even after so many years, I am of the view that their contribution at the global level has been meagre.
Newer schools like INSEAD, which came into being long after IIM-A, IIM-B, IIM-C, have made more remarkable contributions to the world of management than all the IIMs put together. This is not to say that I am questioning the ability of IIM graduates; I am simply trying to put things in perspective, which is different from what people have started perceiving the IIMs to be.
The IIM faculty is fighting tooth and nail to protect its turf. What it fears is that someone in the government may ask uncomfortable questions. These questions could pertain to the parameters of faculty performance.
Across the world, the parameters for faculty evaluation and performance measurement have been direct measures such as originality of research, productivity, dissemination and importance of research to practitioners; and indirect measures as editors of journals, the number of faculty invited for editing special issues, managing research centres and so on.
We need to ask how the faculty at the IIMs has performed on the above criteria in the past 40 years. How many faculty members have performed at the global level and are well-known names? Can a graduate from any business school name just five to seven members of the faculty who are known for their contribution to the corporate sector as researchers, teachers or consultants?
How many Indian management professors, that is, those who operate from India, have contributed to the Harvard Business Review or won awards such as the Schumpeter Award, Nobel Prize and the Ruth Green Award? Incidentally, none of the faculty has made a mark in the global intellectual field but we still rave over the performance of the system.
Corporate houses in India, too, seem aware of this paucity of performance from B-schools' faculty: they want their top management to study from schools abroad. And consider the success of programmes such as those conducted by Michael Porter and Tom Peters in Mumbai and Delhi. The analogy compels you to question the contribution of the IIM faculty in the global arena.
I agree that the government should not subsidise higher education -- but not for reasons cited by the IIMs. The reason is that primary education is a fundamental right and it should be available free of cost across the board. Higher education is a matter of choice that is governed by what an individual would like to do.
The government should not be tinkering with the fee structure; instead it should question the faculty on its performance till date and whether the professors have been non-performing assets in the system. The government should build credibility in the system, operate it with a strong arm, punish the non-performers and reward the performers.
The time has also come for the IIMs to decide whether they want to be a research school or a teaching school. Considering the kind of resources the government has put into creating these institutes, the IIMs should be teaching schools. What needs to be done is to increase the number of seats at the IIMs and then, perhaps, reduce fees since the institute would then be able to recover the money over a larger set of students.
It will be worth remembering that it is the university system that has created far more remarkable professors and contributors to the field of management than these so-called autonomy mongers.
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