MBA Colleges: How top B-schools fare in placements, salary, inclusion

NEW DELHI: Graduating batches of even some of the top management institutions in the country have median salaries ranging from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 6 lakh per annum.

An analysis of data submitted for ranking by the education ministry’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) shows that median salaries were in the Rs 3-6 lakh range at 29 of the top 100 business schools ranked. The latest data considered for the 2022 edition of the rankings is from the 2020-21 academic session which coincided exactly with the Covid-19 pandemic. However, students from just the top 10 did better with median salaries from Rs 13 lakh to Rs 27.60 lakh per annum.

Analysis of NIRF data also shows that only a small fraction of students – 18 out of 4,049 – graduating from the top 10 institutes in 2020-21 went for higher studies with the vast majority landing jobs.

Research activity within the management institutions is low. Collectively, NIRF-ranked B-schools had the lowest average number of papers published – just 6.5 per institute in three years, or two in one. The top 10 have a seriously skewed gender ratio. They had 2,849 women students, less than half the total number – 5,727 – of men.

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NIRF ranking data

A total of 751 institutions participated in the 2022 NIRF rankings under the management category. The NIRF report says that management institutions have the highest proportion – 89.04% – of faculty with PhDs in the top 100.

Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad was at the top of the list in NIRF 2022, and two institutions – Jamia Hamdard and University of Jammu shared the 100th rank.

The number of institutes participating in NIRF has risen 18.9% since the ranking’s first edition in 2016.

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MBA Programme: Teachers, students

The average number of teachers in each of the top 100 management institutions is 45. The average number in the remaining management institutions that applied for ranking is just 14.

The table below shows the pupil-teacher ratios at the top 10 B-schools for the two-year postgraduate programme in management. The total number of students doesn’t include PhD scholars. Among the top-10 management institutions, IIM Ahmedabad has the best student-teacher ratio at 7.8 and National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) Mumbai has the worst at 14.4.

Pupil-teacher ratio at top 10 B-schools

B-school research, case studies

Of the 751 participating institutes, 670 were eligible for the study of comparative research output. Management category institutions have topped the list of institutions having zero publications. As many as 383 out of 670 institutions - 57.16% - do not have a single published research paper to their credit. “This is not surprising,” says the NIRF report, “ since the focus is on “case studies” rather than on research publications in case of management institutions”. Also, management departments and B-schools tend to be far smaller institutions – with fewer students and teachers – than established engineering institutions, let alone universities.

NIRF 2022 has used data from a three-year period (2018 to 2020) for ranking and third party sources for information on scholarly output including research publications and citations.

The participating management institutes published a total of 4,405 research papers. Of these, 3,744 (or 85%) came from the top 100 with the remaining 661 publishing just 15% of the total. The average number of published papers in the management category is just 6.5 per institute in three years.

A total of 670 management institutions has just 1,271 highly-cited publications of which 1,139 (89.61%) are from top 100 institutions and the remaining 132 (10.39%) are from the rest. Management institutes have the second-lowest number of highly-cited publications, after pharmacy.

MBA, PGDM: Placement, higher studies

Six of the 10 top B-schools reported that 100% of their students had been placed in jobs. The other four had students going for higher studies with IIM Kozhikode reporting the highest number of such students – 12.

The median salary of placed graduates from top 10 management category institutes ranged from Rs 13 lakh at IIT Madras to Rs 27.60 lakh at IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta.

Given below are the placement percentages – computed from the number of students to graduate and number placed – and median salaries at the top 10 B-schools.

Placement percentage, salary

Galgotias University, Greater Noida, ranked at 93 in NIRF 2022 management category, had the lowest median salary of placed graduates – Rs 3.20 lakh.

Six institutions in the top 100 reported a median salary less than Rs 4 lakh and four had between Rs 4 lakh and Rs 5 lakh. Over a quarter of the top 100 B-schools reported a median salary under Rs 6 lakh per year for their graduates of the two-year management programme 2020-21. Only 4,199 out of 6,202 graduates – or, 67.7% – secured jobs in these 29 institutions. However, it is relevant to mention that the 2020-21 period saw furious spread of the coronavirus and the pandemic left a deep impact on business.

The lowest placement of graduates – at just 19% – was recorded at Chitkara University in Punjab’s Rajpura where only 72 out of 361 graduates got jobs and none were selected for higher studies.

Given below are the placement percentages of institutions with median salaries under Rs 5 lakh per annum. The placement percentage is the total number of students placed out of the number of graduates.

Median salary Rs 5 lakh and below

Management: Diversity, inclusion

Offering postgraduate programmes, management institutes draw most of their students from outside the states where they are located, allowing for rich language and cultural diversity. As many as 6,808 students out of the total 8,576 – or, 79 % – in top 10 management institutions hail from outside the state and 10 are from foreign countries.

However, they fail in gender diversity and inclusion of marginalised sections. With a strength of 2,849, female students make just 33% of the total roll-strength in the top 10 B-schools.

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Students from historically-marginalised backgrounds – Scheduled Castes, Tribes and Other Backward Classes (SC, ST, OBC) – also don’t find adequate representation despite nine out of the top 10 institutions being public B-schools with reservation in admission. The table below shows the distribution of students by gender, where they come from and caste and community.

B-school students: Where they come from

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In top 10 management institutes, a total of 3,589 out of 8,576 students – or 41% – are from SC, ST, OBC communities, far below the total proportion of seats guaranteed to them by the central reservation policy which is closer to half.