Boom time for B-schools as placement salaries zoom 30 per cent

The placement salaries at India's top business schools rose 30 per cent this year, providing the proverbial silver lining to a year that would otherwise be remembered for controversies over fees, quotas, and the business environment turning sour. Even if one looks at a larger group of B-schools, the placement salary has increased by an average of 20 per cent.

In 2007, a year in which the inflation figure had yet to become the finance minister's Friday fear and crude oil was not hogging headlines, the placement salary spike was 10 per cent. What makes the jump this year even more impressive is that it does not take into account the offers from international companies, which typically dish out more than domestic recruiters.

This flame of optimism burns through this year's All India Management Association's Best B-school Survey 2008, in association with Business Standard and conducted by IMRB International every year. Its ninth edition appears in the latest issue of Indian Management, the AIMA journal published by Business Standard, just out on the news stands.

The graduates of the Super League, which has nine members this year, netted an average placement salary of Rs 13.29 lakh, up from Rs 10.1 lakh reported last year.

However, IIM Ahmedabad Director Sameer K Barua cautions that the real impact of the sub-prime crisis in the US could be seen during the next placement season. "Even in March this year, recruiters had not come to appreciate the far-reaching impact of the crisis." The other reason for the salary spike, according to Barua, is that industry's demand for high-quality managers continues to exceed supply.

The survey lays out a piquant account of the level of teaching, infrastructure and industry engagement as offered by the country's B-schools. The results of the pedagogy appraisal, for instance, show that the faculty members worked harder than ever on the Class of 2006-08. The number of PhDs at the top-tier B-schools went up by 12 per cent. Likewise, the professors wrote a lot more for management journals of repute.

One of the reasons that kept the professors on their toes could be the increasing number of students with experience. More than half the graduates -- 52 per cent -- had work experience. The premier institutes, however, reported more fresh-faced students than schools down the order -- a sign that an MBA is still approached more as a qualification than a learning experience in India.

Engineers dominated the rolls. A whopping 82 per cent of students at Super League schools had an engineering background. Commerce graduates, at 7 per cent, were a distant second.

The AIMA B-school survey does not rank institutes. It classified them into different groups according to their performance on parameters ranging from intellectual capital to industry interface.

It looks only at the 1,120 institutes recognised by the All India Council for Technical Education. This year's survey covers 260 institutes from 23 states and 108 cities, of which 258 made the final cut.