IIM-A follows Harvard,to sell case studies for revenue

The IIM-A follows the Harvard’s pedagogy system of case studies and even has an infrastructural replica on campus —the “Harvard steps” — that lead up to the main entry to the main academic building.

Professor Barua said the institute had not really looked into this aspect of revenue generation until recently,but would,however,not look to charge as much as Harvard does.

There are many reasons why IIM-A is looking to increase its revenues: one being that for the past few years,its revenues have been “in the red” mainly because of back-payments of salaries as per the Sixth Pay Commission. Second,fee revenues went down due to dwindling demand for its corporate education programmes. The companies were largely unable to enroll students of this programme due to economic slowdown. However,it has picked up again post-recession. Recognising this, IIM-A added 14 new Managment Development Programmes (MDPs) in June 2010,a 25 per cent increase. Revenue from MDPs — short-term courses for working executives — generate about a third of the institute’s revenues.

Currently,the institute has not received funding from the government for about six years now except for extension of hostels and other infrastructure (necessitated by a Supreme Court ruling),and revenue had been garnered from advisory services,academics and corporate education programmes.

The revenue crunch has had several implications,a major one being that the institute has been unable to attract world-class teachers from abroad or even the corporate sector.