Throughout the history of business education, classes have been rooms full of engineers. With their ability to crunch numbers, understand, reason and comprehend complexities, entrance tests chose them. They were chiselled further, equipped with the skills of business education, to then be launched to join the C-suite. Now the rite of passage to management education is altering, though, with postgraduate schools entering the early college space.
This year, at least three IIMs join the undergraduate education club. High school students would be picked and trained for intensive business education for five years. IIM Udaipur, Jammu and Ranchi will offer the integrated programme in management (IPM), a five-year blended course of business studies from undergraduate to the postgraduate level, closing with an MBA degree. In most schools, the IPM programme closes with the prestigious MBA, not requiring candidates to take the highly competitive entrance test such as CAT, MAT, XAT, CMAT or ATMA for the postgraduate portion of the course. In fact, pre-empting the popularity this arrangement is going to gain, NTA will take the introductory version of the entrance exam for such an IPM.
“Initially, we advertised we would take candidates via the SAT and the IPMAT (by IIM Indore) exam. But soon after we announced our entry criteria, NTA decided to take a nationwide exam for undergraduate students. So, we will admit students based on those scores too. The idea is that like most others, we also decided to catch people young. If they are aspiring to pursue management, why take any other direction,” said IIM Ranchi director Shailendra Singh.
IIM Indore, the first to offer the IPM, a synthesis of undergraduate programmes like philosophy, sociology, political science, statistics, computer programming, economics, music, languages and theatre, is awarding graduates a BA in Foundations of Management.
IIM Indore director Himanshu Rai said: “Students at the undergrad level need a holistic foundation that prepares them with a blend of arts and science, philosophy and technology, life skills and analytical skills. A traditional BBA or most undergraduate programmes don’t do that.” IIM Rohtak first introduced a BBA+MBA programme in 2019 (intake of 150) and in 2020 (for 210 seats), over 11,000 candidates registered for the IIM Rohtak IPM entrance examination.
