suggested.
‘That’s right,’ he said, apparently relieved that I had offered him a way out.
I had once asked Arindam about the criticism that his institute didn’t really offer careers. It was undoubtedly successful in attracting students, but the students, on graduating, seemed to end up mostly in the very organization that had given them their expensive degrees, teaching at the institute and working for Planman as its managers. Arindam’s response was that his organization was a ‘family’, one that offered a continuation of the camaraderie experienced by the students. He also pointed out that, unlike the IIMs, he was not using public money to produce a small number of MBAs who then received extravagant salaries from multinational corporations. ‘They’ve cornered hundred-acre campuses in India. The six IIMs, taken together, teach a thousand students. And because they have so few students, the average pay package is eight to nine lakhs. That is aura! Wow!’
He was right in pointing out how higher education for the Indian elite, from the engineering colleges like the Indian Institutes of Technology to the IIM business schools, was being funded by the state, producing technocrats and corporate executives who then went on to attack the state for being inefficient and wasteful. ‘Every American president should start by thanking the Indian taxpayer,’ he said, noting that it was US multinationals that benefited most from the training given to IIT and IIM graduates. By contrast, Arindam said, he had privatized management education, applying to it the genuine rules of the marketplace. His graduates might get smaller starting salaries. They might be working, he said sarcastically, for distinctly unglamorous companies like ‘Raju Underwear’ and ‘Relaxo Hawaii Chappals’, but they were not coasting on the taxpayer’s money. He was training many more MBAs, people who would work in Indian organizations that needed their skills. ‘Our placements are improving. Foreign companies are also coming,’ he added defensively.
The bulk of IIPM students still ended up working for Arindam. It was hard to get an answer to how much they were paid when they joined him, but I had a rough idea because Arindam had, in a different context, divided his organization’s salary structure into three groups; those getting up to 25,000 rupees a month, those getting up to 75,000 rupees a month, and those making more than 75,000 rupees a month. It seemed reasonable to assume that a starting IIPM graduate was in the first category; at 25,000 rupees a month or 3 lakhs a year, they were pulling in a third of an IIM graduate, which doesn’t seem bad. But this is also just double the amount a call centre worker with a basic – and cheap – college degree could earn, although the managerial work presumably offers more upward mobility and better hours than a call centre job.
Yet the problem with Arindam’s approach lay deeper than the salaries his graduates made. Even in the world of closed Indian companies, Arindam’s organization is unusual. It is not publicly traded, and it was incorporated only very recently. The success and failure of IIPM students depends largely upon what happens to Planman, and what happens to Planman depends on what happens to Arindam. As for what happens to Arindam, that depends on whether the students keep coming. If the business school produces the greater part of the company’s revenues and employs most of the graduating students, this model can keep functioning only as long as there is a growing body of students willing to put up substantial sums of money for their degrees, at which point the whole thing starts looking like a pyramid scheme.
7
But even though the bloggers were right in much of their criticism, they seemed unable to comprehend that the questionable practices of IIPM and Planman were an expression of the times, and that Arindam wasn’t so much a rogue management guru as a particularly
‘That’s right,’ he said, apparently relieved that I had offered him a way out.
I had once asked Arindam about the criticism that his institute didn’t really offer careers. It was undoubtedly successful in attracting students, but the students, on graduating, seemed to end up mostly in the very organization that had given them their expensive degrees, teaching at the institute and working for Planman as its managers. Arindam’s response was that his organization was a ‘family’, one that offered a continuation of the camaraderie experienced by the students. He also pointed out that, unlike the IIMs, he was not using public money to produce a small number of MBAs who then received extravagant salaries from multinational corporations. ‘They’ve cornered hundred-acre campuses in India. The six IIMs, taken together, teach a thousand students. And because they have so few students, the average pay package is eight to nine lakhs. That is aura! Wow!’
He was right in pointing out how higher education for the Indian elite, from the engineering colleges like the Indian Institutes of Technology to the IIM business schools, was being funded by the state, producing technocrats and corporate executives who then went on to attack the state for being inefficient and wasteful. ‘Every American president should start by thanking the Indian taxpayer,’ he said, noting that it was US multinationals that benefited most from the training given to IIT and IIM graduates. By contrast, Arindam said, he had privatized management education, applying to it the genuine rules of the marketplace. His graduates might get smaller starting salaries. They might be working, he said sarcastically, for distinctly unglamorous companies like ‘Raju Underwear’ and ‘Relaxo Hawaii Chappals’, but they were not coasting on the taxpayer’s money. He was training many more MBAs, people who would work in Indian organizations that needed their skills. ‘Our placements are improving. Foreign companies are also coming,’ he added defensively.
The bulk of IIPM students still ended up working for Arindam. It was hard to get an answer to how much they were paid when they joined him, but I had a rough idea because Arindam had, in a different context, divided his organization’s salary structure into three groups; those getting up to 25,000 rupees a month, those getting up to 75,000 rupees a month, and those making more than 75,000 rupees a month. It seemed reasonable to assume that a starting IIPM graduate was in the first category; at 25,000 rupees a month or 3 lakhs a year, they were pulling in a third of an IIM graduate, which doesn’t seem bad. But this is also just double the amount a call centre worker with a basic – and cheap – college degree could earn, although the managerial work presumably offers more upward mobility and better hours than a call centre job.
Yet the problem with Arindam’s approach lay deeper than the salaries his graduates made. Even in the world of closed Indian companies, Arindam’s organization is unusual. It is not publicly traded, and it was incorporated only very recently. The success and failure of IIPM students depends largely upon what happens to Planman, and what happens to Planman depends on what happens to Arindam. As for what happens to Arindam, that depends on whether the students keep coming. If the business school produces the greater part of the company’s revenues and employs most of the graduating students, this model can keep functioning only as long as there is a growing body of students willing to put up substantial sums of money for their degrees, at which point the whole thing starts looking like a pyramid scheme.
7
But even though the bloggers were right in much of their criticism, they seemed unable to comprehend that the questionable practices of IIPM and Planman were an expression of the times, and that Arindam wasn’t so much a rogue management guru as a particularly
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