IIMs underestimated meltdown impact: Singh

“It is a lesson for all of us and believing that things might not change drastically in the near future,we will have to plan to handle the situation,” he said.

This year,267 post-graduate students are sitting for placements at the institute and 72 companies have participated in the exercise so far. The IIM-L has already been into one week of placement exercise and the process is expected to continue next week till all the students are recruited.

“The situation is certainly not as good as last year and it has been a tough time for all of us. We hope that in next few days,all our students would be recruited,” said Singh.

Interestingly,he admitted that as in other IIMs,Public Sector Units have come to the rescue even at the IIM-L. “The PSUs have been a major recruiting force and are a big relief. Earlier,we did not develop much contact with them because even students were not interested in joining them. But the scenario is different this time.”

Regarding the future expansion plans of IIM-L,he said there will be more sections of the PGP batch (from 5 sections to 6 sections) more faculty members and more students (from 370 to around 420). The IIM-L is also mulling a fee hike.

“For the two-year PGP programme,we already have the lowest fee structure at Rs 5 lakh. Thus,keeping our financial requirements in mind,we are planning to increase our fee and will decide on the modalities soon,” he said.

While the fee at the IIM-Ahmedabad is 11 lakh,the fee for two year programme at IIM-Banglore and IIM-Calcutta is Rs 9 lakh.

The IIM-L has become a member of the International Consortium for executive education to provide specialised training to the executives,he said. Universities from Brazil,Switzerland and other countries are already party of the Consortium and the IIM-L has been made its member from India.