SELF-RELIANCE THROUGH RESOURCE
 GENERATION
 

The P.G. programme in Management is one of the most market-driven professional educational programmes in the country; and has now come of age. Therefore, it is only in the fitness of things that a review be made of the heavy subsidy that now goes into supporting IIMs and the University Departments of Management. Perhaps it is time to progressively reduce such grants so that at least by the end of the 9th Plan, they are in a position to be self reliant in meeting their operational budget requirements.

The issue of self reliance of management institutions has/been raised on a number of occasions in the past and has also been commented upon by the Kurien Committee on IIMs.

- The starting salary of a Management Graduate of an average Management institution today is about Rs.10000-12000. Such people face no problem in finding necessary resources for a two-year study (which almost guarantees sure job and promising career) in view of easy availability of bank loans and fee waiver for SC/ST candidates.

- The experiences of a large number of Management institution in the private sector do clearly demonstrate that with a proper fee structure, the institutions in the Government sector including universities can also be self reliant.

- While the commission should take a firm view on this aspect, the need to provide necessary resources to meet the capital needs of these institutions may however have to be agreed to, at least for a limited period. However, a point that needs to be considered is as to whether the

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Government Sector (University/IIMs) should any more invest in this field considering the fact that private sector can and should do equally well and provide quality management education.

- At least some of the leading Management institutions from the Government system and the universities must aim at building a Corpus Fund to meet certain portion of their operational budget requirements. This can be done with innovative approaches in fund raising.

To achieve these objectives of self-reliance, the Working Group recommends that Management institutions:

- Raise the tuition fees to a level which can be justified by the market situation, say between Rs.25000 to Rs.40000 per year.

- Introduce a service charge on every organisation that visits the management institutions for campus recruitment. All the 4 IIMs have already started this practice. It is possible for the University System to emulate this.

- Reserve upto 20% of the seats for industry sponsored or NRI students, for whom the fees could be at least 4 times that of what is charged from Indian students.

- Rationalise their manpower (over a period of time) with a view to avoiding unnecessary over-manning and cost effective management.

- Encourage faculty to take up training and consultancy for Industries which should become a major source of revenue for these institutions. The practices followed in this regard at the IIMs may be emulated by the University system.

- Establish in every major town/city/area where a management institution/University Management Department is in operation a partnership alliance with a `lead industry' so that material and manpower support is available from that industry, in addition to the students and faculty having opportunities to interact with the industry.

In terms of the relative roles of the Private Sector and the Government sector in meeting the ever-growing demand

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for professionally trained managerial manpower in the country, the Working Group recommends that:

- The Private Sector be encouraged to play an increasingly dominant role in meeting the professionally trained managerial. manpower needs of the country.

- While the regulatory mechanism of the Government must play its part in admitting new institutions into the system, it must not degenerate into the old permit/-licence raj of yester years; and

- the best answer to some of the malpractices that crept into the system such as capitation fees or high tuition fees lies in ensuring some degree of balance between demand and supply. It must be recognised that malpractices creep in mostly in a `regime of shortage'.