BT-MDRA India’s Best B-Schools Ranking: The Best Stay the Course

It is perhaps fitting that the two oldest IIMs, IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta, have come up tops by claiming first and second ranks, respectively, in the BT-MDRA India’s Best B-Schools Survey in which 270 business schools participated. It was a close call: the difference between the two schools was just 0.6 points. The others in the Top Five are IIM Lucknow, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research and IIM Indore. In fact, there has been just a small reshuffle in the top ten pack. Further, in the top ten, the majority—six—are government-owned IIMs, while the other four are privately-owned and managed.

The ostensible lack of action at the top hides the varied undercurrents in India’s B-school landscape captured by the BT-MDRA study. For one, B-school education continues to be in heavy demand as students look to encash its value as a ticket to a good corporate career. The average batch strength of top 100 B-schools rose from 1,076 in 2024 to 1,173 in 2025. “The demand for business education continues to grow steadily, and our numbers reflect this trend. For academic year 2025–26, 61,595 students applied to NMIMS, an increase from the previous year,” says Papiya De, Program Chairperson, SVKM’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.  

That said, the challenges remain, with global uncertainty, including trade wars, and fast adoption of technology such as AI, making companies wary of hiring. “On the placement front, we are aligned with global and national trends. The job market has remained muted over the past year, and like many B-schools, we have observed companies reducing the number of internships offers. This is not a reflection on student quality but a broader hiring slowdown,” says Papiya De.

The dip in placements is showing in salaries as well. The average salary at the Top 25 B-schools dipped from Rs 23.12 lakh in 2023 to Rs 22.7 lakh in 2025. Average salaries for graduates from the Top 25 B-schools have recorded the slowest growth (16%) in five years. This, along with a much larger fee increase, has lowered the return on investment of a B-school degree. The average course fee of Top 25 colleges rose from Rs 18.78 lakh to Rs 20.17 lakh. It has risen nearly 23% in the last five years.

Is this a blip? For some, yes. Despite the above challenges, McKinsey seems to be gung-ho about hiring India’s B-school graduates; in the past three years, 77% of its hiring in India has been from leading B-schools. It has expanded the MBA summer hiring by 41% over the last two years. MBA graduates have long been an integral part of its talent pipeline. The firm says they bring in a wide variety of competencies: problem-solving acumen, leadership potential, and diverse professional experience along with analytical rigour, collaborative mindset, and global perspective.

Given the challenges of a world in flux, what practices are B-schools adopting to thrive and make a mark?

One MBA

The demand for a good management education encouraged many B-schools such as NMIMS, IIMA, Great Lakes Institute and SP Jain to open multiple campuses. But they often struggle to tap the full synergies between them. The School of Management, NMIMS, is out to change that. It has made its flagship MBA programme into an integrated offering designed to give students across campuses a seamless experience. Its ‘One MBA’ initiative is more than a shared syllabus. It is a structured system in which faculty members from every campus come together to jointly design, deliver, and evaluate the course. The initiative is anchored by the Mumbai campus, which hosts weekly faculty meetings and collaborative workshops where course plans, teaching approaches, evaluation methods, and even classroom experiences are aligned. As a result, not only is the curriculum common, but so are the assessments, right down to the question papers.

The school believes this model serves many purposes. Academically, the quality of learning is not determined by the campus where a student is studying. Strategically, it strengthens collaboration among faculty by enabling cross-learning and shared ownership of outcomes. “In essence, One MBA is not just a process, it is a philosophy to democratise excellence, to build a cohesive academic community, and to uphold a single promise across campuses. Every MBA student of NMIMS receives the same experience. This multi-campus coordination programme idea, championed by its Vice Chancellor, operates on a simple but powerful principle: one programme, one standard, multiple locations,” says Papiya De.  

Human Resources

India Inc is increasingly adopting analytics in decision-making and embedding AI in all aspects of the employee life cycle including hiring. That organisations today hire for skills rather than for roles has put a sharper focus on continuous skill development. Retaining talent becomes a lot easier when employees see paths to grow within an organisation and can expand their skill sets. Companies are, therefore, providing employees opportunities to unlearn and upskill themselves, either through funding these programmes or running them in the organisation. B-schools are making efforts to tap the trend. The number of management development programmes (MDPs) by the Top 25 B-schools rose from 57 in 2024 to 68 in 2025.

B-schools are realising that traditional classroom learning must be supplemented with practical experiences such as real-world case studies and simulations, a more structured industry collaboration and ongoing mentorship with industry leaders. This will make the transition from campus to corporate life easier.

“B-schools need to adapt their curriculum to keep up with the requirements of corporates. In the age of AI, there has to be a growing focus on developing human-centric leadership qualities like empathy, conflict management, emotional intelligence and resilience. These need to be in built in the curriculum,” says Lopamudra Banerjee, CHRO, Carrier Midea India (CMI).

CMI believes B-schools also need to design the curricula to address the complexities of global HR management, international labour laws, sustainability, and ethical decision-making to prepare leaders for a responsible role in a complex business environment. The company hires a large part of entry-level managers from engineering colleges and B-schools.

Practice Plus Research

Indian B-schools have come a long way in research—as many as 95% permanent faculty among Top 25 B-schools has a PhD, according to the BT-MDRA study. Investing in cutting-edge research and faculty is the key for a bump in global rankings, say experts.

Also important is academia-industry linkages. Take the case of Anilesh Seth. After a BTech from IIT Madras and an MBA from IIMB, Seth, with about 40 years of corporate experience spanning mostly IT services companies and global capability centres (GCCs), decided to do a PhD. Research had always fascinated him. Over a breakfast conversation, a professor at Indian School of Business asked if he was interested in a PhD. He found himself applying for the Executive Fellow Program in Management. The fee was relatively steep: around Rs 56 lakh. He had left his corporate career in 2000 and had been consulting and teaching ever since. The doctorate from ISB added significant credibility to his profile. “I believe it has aided in opening several opportunities for me,” he says. “I chose to do my research in the very contemporary topic of GCCs. I have been working in this field for the past 25 years. The research has added to both my credibility as well as my ability to view the field with a ‘pracademic’ lens. I have used my research on several occasions in my consulting assignments as well as in the GCC leadership programme that I co-designed at IIM Bangalore,” says Seth.

Rethinking Leadership

Amid the focus on challenges being faced by companies, business school leadership often forgets the need to rethink its role. While Peter Drucker conceptualised many foundational theories of management thinking, in recent years, his vision has largely been forgotten by companies with managements focusing on shareholder capitalism. But in the new geopolitical and geoeconomic environment, there have been some calls to bring businesses and business education back to Drucker’s vision that companies serve as a vital force towards global peace and prosperity.

CMI’s Lopamudra sums up. “Ethical leadership isn’t just about doing what’s right—it’s about doing what’s right when it’s hard. In today’s competitive world, leaders are often faced with decisions that test not only their business acumen but also their moral compass. Ethical leadership means making choices that prioritise integrity, fairness, and respect—even when no one is watching. Can organisations be both ethical and agile? Can we build cultures where doing the right thing isn’t just encouraged but its expected?”

If that is the goal of businesses and business leaders today, B-schools also need to rethink their goals. This is the moment to fix B-schools.