Other name | IIM or IIMs (singular) |
|---|---|
| Type | Public Business School |
| Established | 1961; 65 years ago (1961) |
Parent institution | Ministry of Education,Government of India |
| Budget | ₹251.89 crore (US$30 million) (FY2025–26 est.)[1] |
| Visitor | President of India |
| Location | 22 cities in India |
| Language | English |
TheIndian Institutes of Management (IIMs) areCentrally FundedBusiness Schools formanagement offeringundergraduate,postgraduate,doctoral andexecutive programmes along with some additional courses in the field ofbusiness administration. The establishment of IIMs was initiated byJawaharlal Nehru, the firstprime minister of India, based on the recommendation of thePlanning Commission of India.[2][3]
IIMs were declaredinstitutions of national importance by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)[4] after the passage ofIndian Institutes of Management Act, 2017. By this act, IIMs were given more autonomy in handling their day-to-day operations. The act changed the IIM governing body from the IIM council to an IIM coordination forum. IIMs were granted much leeway to decide their courses, fees and other related matters.[5] Top IIMs — such as IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Indore and IIM Lucknow — have featured in top 100 global b-schools by FT MBA Ranking,[6] as well as achieved top 10 rankings among management schools in India, according to theNational Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) used by theHRD minister of India.[7]
The full timeMaster of Business Administration (MBA) programmes, are the flagship programs across all IIMs.[8][9][10] The full time MBA degree is offered as a two-year Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) or the one-year global MBA (EPGP, PGPX, MBAEx, PGPEX-VLM, PGP-BL & IPMX). Eight leading IIMs — IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Indore, IIM Mumbai, IIM Shillong, IIM Lucknow, and IIM Kozhikode — offer the one year MBA as a full-time programme that follows the global MBA norms. Some IIMs also offer a two-year part time (executive) MBA for graduates with more work experience.[11][12][13]
IIMs only offered diplomas at the end of the full time programmes However, since the passage of IIM Act 2017, all IIMs have started offeringMaster of Business Administration (MBA). Some IIMs offer the Fellow Programme in Management (FPM), a doctoral programme. The fellowship is considered to be equivalent to aDBA globally.[14] Most IIMs also offer short-term Executive MBA courses and part-time programmes. Some IIMs also offer unique programs, likeIIM Bodh Gaya,IIM Rohtak,IIM Ranchi andIIM Indore's Five Year Integrated Programme in Management[15] andIIM Lucknow's Working Managers' Programme of two years.[16]IIM Rohtak is the only IIM which offers a Five Year Integrated Program in Law (BBA+LLB).[17] The IIM's are some of the most competitive business schools in the world to get accepted into, with an acceptance rate of around 3%.[18][19]
After India becameindependent in 1947, thePlanning Commission was entrusted to oversee and direct the development of the nation. India grew rapidly in the 1950s, and in the late 1950s the Commission started facing difficulties in finding suitable managers for the large number ofpublic sector enterprises that were being established in India as a part of its industrial policy. To solve this problem, the Planning Commission in 1959 invited Professor George Robbins ofUCLA to help in setting up an All India Institute of Management Studies. Based on his recommendations, the Indian government decided to set up two elite management institutes, namedIndian Institutes of Management. Calcutta andAhmedabad were chosen as the locations for the two new institutes.[35]
The institute at Calcutta was established first, on 13 November 1961,[36] and was namedIndian Institute of Management Calcutta orIIM Calcutta. It was set up in collaboration with theMIT Sloan School of Management, the government ofWest Bengal, theFord Foundation, and Indian industry.[37] The institute at Ahmedabad was established in the following month and was named theIndian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Like MIT Sloan in the case of IIM Calcutta,Harvard Business School played an important role in the initial stages of IIM Ahmedabad.[38]
In 1972, a committee headed byRavi J. Matthai took note of the success of the two established IIMs and recommended the setting up of two more IIMs. Based on the committee's recommendation, a new IIM, originally intended to cater exclusively to the needs of public sector enterprises, was established in Bangalore (IIM Bangalore) the next year.[39][35] In 1981, the first IIM Review Committee was convened to examine the progress of the three existing IIMs and to make recommendations. The committee noted that the three IIMs were producing around 400 PGP graduates every year and that they had reached their optimum capacity. It proposed the opening of two more IIMs to meet the rising demand for management professionals. It also recommended expanding the Fellowship programmes, similar to PhD programmes, to meet the growing demand for faculty in management schools in India. The fourth IIM,IIM Lucknow, was established in 1984 based on the committee's recommendation.
Two more IIMs, the fifth and sixth, were established atKozhikode andIndore in 1996.[40][41]IIM Shillong was the seventh IIM to be established, following a 2005 decision by the Government of India;[42] its foundation stone was laid on 1 December 2007;[43] and its first academic session was 2008–09.[14][44] Since 2007, fourteen new IIMs have been set up, bringing the total number of IIMs to 20, IIM-Jammu being the latest one, starting in 2016. In 2023, prestigious National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, was converted into an IIM, making for a total of 21 IIMs. In 2025, the twenty second IIM was established in Guwahati.
The Union Cabinet, on 24 January 2017, approved the bill that became theIndian Institutes of Management Act, 2017, which declares IIMs asInstitutes of National Importance and enables them to grant degrees and to further make other important changes to the institute.[45] The IIM bill was passed by theLok Sabha on 28 July 2017[46] and by theRajya Sabha on 19 December 2017.[47] After receiving presidential assent, the IIM bill became an Act on 31 December 2017.[48][49]
In the2023 Union Budget grants to the IIMs were cut in half. Heads of IIMs and B-schools said this would effect the newer IIMs disproportionately.[50]
The IIMs mainly offer undergraduate/ postgraduate, postgraduate, doctoral, and executive education programs. Some programs offered by all IIMs are similar; however, some IIMs offer unique programs for specialized purposes.
All IIMs offer a two-year full-time Post Graduate Program in Management (PGP), equivalent to a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree.[51][52][53] The program is considered the flagship program of IIMs, and awards the Master of Business Administration (MBA) to successful candidates. Since 2018, all the IIMs have started granting MBA degrees for this flagship program.[54]
This program is usually structured into six trimesters spread across two years, starting in June and running until April of the second year. The first-year coursework generally consists of core courses in various management disciplines, while in the second year, students are allowed to select courses from an exhaustive list of electives. The PGP is a general, fully integrated management program with no specialization, and typically includes courses in:
The 2-year MBA programs offered by IIMs at:
are often termed as Master's in Management (MIM) internationally and are often placed around top 100 Master's in Management programs across the world since inception.
To compete on the global stage, the premier IIMs found the necessity to start MBA programs that would be ranked globally at par with the MBA programs of Harvard (Harvard Business School of Harvard University) and Wharton (The Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania). Within a decade of their inception, the one-year MBA programs have catapulted the position of the top IIMs to within the top 50 global MBA list. Since 2006, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Shillong and IIM Udaipur have started offering the one-year, full-time postgraduate programs for professionals having approximately 5 years or more of work experience, which are a unique addition to the bucket of flagship programs which adds experienced professionals who add valued experience to the system of full-time MBA.
The one-year program was necessitated because the normal 2-year program is primarily aimed at new graduates or graduates with less than 4–5 years of work experience. The 1-year programs are general, fully integrated management programs with no specialization, and typically include the same courses as offered in a typical 2-year MBA program. These intensive programs typically require 75 credits or around 750 hours of classroom teaching along with projects and other coursework as in a normal 2-year MBA program. The flagship 1-year MBA programs offered by IIMs at Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Calcutta are often termed as Global MBAs internationally and have been ranked within the top 50 Global MBA programs across the world since their inception.[55]
Designed as a regular MBA program, which focuses on using the prior work experience of the students, the one-year ExecutiveMBA is named differently by different IIMs. It is called Post Graduate Program for Executives at IIM Calcutta and IIM Shillong (PGPEX for short), and at IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Udaipur (PGPX for short). It is called an Executive Post Graduate Program (EPGP) at IIM Bangalore and IIM Indore, and International Program in Management for Executives (IPMX) at IIM Lucknow. All these programs admit only candidates with 5 or more years of professional experience and usually use a combination of GMAT score, essays, and personal interviews as entry criteria, similar to other globally reputed MBA programs. The median GMAT score of the batches at IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Indore and IIM Udaipur is usually above 700 and compares with the best in the world.[56]
Other than these general variants, many IIMs offer specialty programmes built which focus on different areas, e.g. Post Graduate Programme in Sustainable Management (PGP-SM) at IIM Lucknow,[57] Post Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management (PGPHRM) at IIM Ranchi[58] and many more.
Five IIMs, IIM Indore and IIM Rohtak, IIM Jammu, IIM Bodh Gaya and IIM Ranchi also offer five-year integrated programs.[59][60] Students join this program after high school (class XII). The program is called IPM (Integrated Programme in Management) at both the institutes. The course structures are similar though not same at both the institutes. For three years, students focus on "statistics, economics and humanities", joining the post-graduate cohort in years 4 and 5. IIM Indore established its program in 2011 and IIM Rohtak in 2019. They were followed by IIM Ranchi, IIM Jammu and IIM Bodhgaya in 2021. IIM Indore awards program graduates bothBA (Foundations of Management) andMBA. IIM Rohtak awards theBBA/MBA to five-year graduates andBBA to students who opt-out after three years.[59][60]
IIMs offer a Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) as a full-timeDBA Programme . This programme is aimed at preparing students for careers in teaching or research in different disciplines of management, as well as for careers outside academics that demand a high degree of investigative and analytical ability. A student who completes this programme at any IIM, where (s)he is registered as a doctoral scholar, is awarded the title ofFellow Member (e.g.Fellow Member of the Indian Institutes of Management). This Fellow Programme is equivalent to theDBA degree. Students receiving such a fellowship every year, across all IIMs, work in close association with one another in specific research areas of their choice.
Many IIMs offer Executive MBA programme targeted at working professionals. These are often short-term or part-time programmes and are known by various names such asMaster of Management Studies (MMS),Management Development Programme (MDP),Advanced Masters Program in Management of Global Enterprises (AMPM), andExecutive General Management Programme (EGMP). The certificate programmes at IIMs are not considered equivalent to an Executive MBA offered by the IIMs . Only the diploma-level programmes are considered equivalent, depending on whether it is full-time or part-time. Many IIMs—such as IIM Indore, IIMC, IIMB, IIMK, IIM Kashipur, and IIM Rohtak—have partnered with third-party companies to enable these courses to be provided under a distributed model.
Some IIMs offer specialised programmes targeted at various management segments. IIM Ahmedabad offers a six-month, full-time programme called theArmed Forces Programme (AFP) aimed at military personnel. IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore offer full-time programmes inpublic administration andpublic policy are called thePost Graduate Programme in Public Management and Policy (PGP-PMP) andPost Graduate Programme in Public Policy Management (PGPPM), respectively forcivil servants of theIndian Administrative Service cadre. IIM Bangalore offers a two-year, part-time programme called thePost-Graduate Programme in Software Enterprise Management (PGPSEM),[61] an executive general-management education programme designed for the specific needs of professionals working in the software and information technology industry. IIM Indore offers a 5-yearIntegrated Programme in Management (IPM) that leads to a combined undergraduate-cum-graduate diploma.[62] IIM Ranchi is the first and only IIM to offer a full-timePost Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management (PGDHRM) programme.[58] IIM Bangalore offers a two-year Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship to "promote skill development in district economies".[63]
Different programmes of IIMs follow different admission processes. Admission for residents of India to the two-year PGP programmes at all IIMs is based on theCommon Admission Test (CAT). CAT scores are often used as the primary short-listing criteria for admissions. International/overseas applicants have the option to apply usingGMAT scores in lieu of CAT scores.[64] GMAT scores are a prerequisite short-listing criteria used for admission to the one-year full-time programme for experienced executives.[65][66] Test requirements for doctoral programmes vary. Some IIMs require candidates to make a presentation of a broad research idea or take a Research Aptitude Test (RAT) followed by a round of interviews while all are compelled to accept scores on standardised tests such as the CAT,GATE,GMAT, andGRE. The overall profiles of candidates, including past academic and professional accomplishments, are considered for all programmes, along with valid standard test scores. Some programmes require essays and academic or professional recommendations. The final round of admission evaluations involves aninterview, before which some IIMs conduct other evaluation processes like written assessment tests and group discussions.
The Common Admission Test (CAT) is a management aptitude test conducted by the IIMs primarily as an evaluation tool for admission to their two-year PGP programmes. It is widely considered one of the most competitive exams in the world,[67] with a success rate of around one in two hundred.[68] Even with the recent addition of new colleges, in 2013 the acceptance rate at IIMs was 1.714%, one of the lowest in the world.[69]
Originally conducted as a paper-and-pencil test given on a particular date all over India, in 2009 CAT began being given as acomputer-based assessment operated byPrometric.[70] In 2014,TCS received a 5-year contract to conduct the test. The online test is now given over a period of a few weeks.
In August 2011, the six newer IIMs (Raipur, Rohtak, Ranchi, Udaipur, Trichy and Kashipur) announced that in the coming year they will replace the group-discussion round with a common written analysis test to evaluate communication and comprehension skill. The seven older IIMs did not announce plans to change the admission process.[71]
The admissions for the two-year full-time programme is done by shortlisting based on CAT scores in conjunction with candidate profile suitability. This is followed by evaluation of essays and a panel-interview round. The quality of prior work experience and future leadership potential is a critical factor in the selections.[72][73][74]
IIMs also follow aquota system, as per the provisions of theIndian constitution. As per the provisions, 15% of the seats are reserved for students ofScheduled Castes, and 7.5% forScheduled Tribes. Since 2008, theOther Backward Classes have also been given 27% reservation and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) have up to 10% reservation, after theSupreme Court of India upheld the validity of relevant government regulation. The provisions are being implemented in a phased manner due to resource constraints. All aspirants have to take theCommon Admission Test which consists of an objective-type exam, a group-discussion round, and personal interviews, with the cut-off for reserved-category candidates being possibly lower than for general-category candidates. Once admitted to a programme, a reserved category student has to meet all the criteria for completing the programme as a general-category student. Regular counselling sessions, extra classes, and tutorials, by senior students, for needy students are a regular feature of the IIMs.[75][76] IIMs provide financial support to needy and deserving students in the form of scholarships.[77]
In 2004, IIM fees were adjusted by the HRE to₹30,000 (equivalent to₹110,000 or US$1,300 in 2023) annually.[78][79]
However as of 2023 the total fees for the 2-year program, ranged from₹20 lakh (US$24,000) to₹30 lakh (US$35,000)[80] Inflation in India[81][82] has been cited as one of the reasons for the fee hikes at IIMs.[83][84]
The fees of the college is influenced by the age and performance of the institute. For example IIM C, the oldest IIM in the country had a total course fees of₹27 lakh (US$32,000) for the academic year 2022-24.[80] While IIM Jammu, the youngest IIM had a total course fees of₹17.15 lakh (US$20,000).[85]
The IIMs also have several executive programs for working executives and professionals. The full-time executive program at IIM Udaipur launched in 2019 had a fees of₹15.8 lakh (US$19,000) while the data analytics program was₹21 lakh (US$25,000).[86] The same year IIM Lucknow's 6-month data analytics program costs₹2.49 lakh (US$2,900) while its analytics program for finance professionals costed₹1.43 lakh (US$1,700).[87][88][89]
The following data[90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101] pertains to the older six IIMs (Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Kolkatta, Lucknow, Indore, Kozhikode):
| 2021-22 (in lakh Indian rupee) | IIM Ahmedabad | IIM Bengaluru | IIM Kolkatta | IIM Lucknow | IIM Indore | IIM Kozhikode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 30,217 | 26,194 | 22,442 | 20,007 | 22,151 | 25,056 |
| Academic Receipts | 25,875 | 22,899 | 14,209 | 17,698 | 17,442 | 24,275 |
| "Academic Receipts" as % of Total Revenue | 86 | 87 | 63 | 88 | 79 | 97 |
| Profit ("Excess of Income over Expenditure") | 4,725 | 8,241 | 5,564 | 7,281 | 8,061 | 9,354 |
| Profit Margin | 15.6% | 31.5% | 24.8% | 36.4% | 36.4% | 37.3% |
| Total Number of PG Students for the year | 874 | 1,057 | 1,069 | 1,129 | 1,145 | 1,172 |
| Income per student, if 'Profit' is distributed among PG students | 5.4 | 7.8 | 5.2 | 6.5 | 7.0 | 8.0 |
As IIMs are considered as not-for-profit institutions, IIMs do not pay any 'corporate tax' to theIncome Tax Department, Government of India. In 2023, the corporate tax in India was approximately 25% in the 2020s.[102]
In 2023, the fee charged by the older six IIMs (ABCLIK) were in the range of approximately 21 - 26 lakhs for the two year full-time PG programme/ MBA. The fee charged by these IIMs were 22-26 times India's annual per capita income (Rs. 96,522 in 2022-23, at constant prices).[103][104] Globally, this places IIMs amongst any of the institutions that charge the highest fee from its citizens, with reference to the annual per capita income of the nation.
In 2016, a constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India mentioned that “Education is... ...a noble ‘occupation’... those who establish and are managing the educational institutions are not expected to indulge in profiteering or commercialise this noble activity.” The Supreme Court also mentioned that “... the occupation of education cannot be treated at par with other economic activities.”.[105]
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