Why Indian B-Schools struggle to crack international rankings

While Indian business schools (B-schools) such as the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), ISBs and a handful of others can claim to be centres of excellence with several notable alumni on their rosters, that doesn’t hold true for a majority of India’s estimated 3,000+ B-schools, which fall short of being aspirational for both students and recruiters.

Even for the IIMs, their lacklustre global rankings paint a sobering reality. For instance, the QS World University Rankings–Full Time MBA: Global 2023 of Top 100 colleges has only four Indian B-schools—IIM Ahmedabad (44), IIM Bangalore (IIMB, 50), IIM Calcutta (68) and ISB Hyderabad and Mohali (78). And the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2023 which lists the world’s Top 100 MBA programmes has just ISB (39), IIMA (51), IIMB (52), IIMC (76), IIM Indore (IIMI, 89) and IIM Lucknow (IIML, 90). This raises the question—why do Indian B-schools struggle to meet global standards? This is especially pertinent at a time when economic power is shifting to Asia and China is viewed with suspicion, giving India an opportunity to become a management hub in this part of the world.

The first step towards an international ranking is to jump on to the accreditation bandwagon, say the colleges. The Triple Crown in management education refers to business schools certified by three major bodies: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Association of MBAs (AMBA), and EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS).

And getting them is difficult. “Accreditation is not an affair to be taken lightly. It involves some investment of time, money, resources, etc., and the agencies will not give you accreditation that easily. It takes several years and sometimes multiple attempts to get accredited,” says IIMB Director Rishikesha T. Krishnan.

Only 24 participants in the list of two-year programmes in BT-MDRA India’s Best B-schools Survey 2023 have at least one international accreditation. Among these, only IIMC and IIMI are triple-crown holders (as is ISB, which tops BT’s new ranking for one-year MBAs). Eighteen institutes have AACSE, 11 have AMBA and only four have EQUIS—IIMC, IIMI, IIMA, and IIMB (IIM Kozhikode, which did not participate in BT’s ranking, also has EQUIS accreditation).

The schools point out that some of the consideration criteria such as internationalisation, research output in international publications, and carbon footprint & sustainability are inherently disadvantageous for India. “These rankings are based on certain parameters which we don’t want to fulfil because we don’t want to lose our character. Diversity in inter-country students is one of the parameters in those rankings. We have 95-98 per cent Indians,” says IIMA Director Bharat Bhasker.

EQUIS, particularly, requires the schools to attract international students. The definition of international has hurt Asian schools a fair bit, say heads of institutes. “A minor school in Luxembourg will get ranked higher because it is no big deal for someone from Spain or Germany to go there. It’s a totally unfair way of defining what ‘international’ means,” says SPJIMR Dean Varun Nagaraj. Besides, salaries of students and faculty in India will be lower than what a European economy offers, even if considered at purchasing power parity, he adds.

Sangeeta Shah Bhardwaj, Acting Director of MDI Gurgaon, says large B-schools with a good corpus, processes, and batch size can show their performance required to attain global ranking, while

Smaller B Schools possibly find it harder. “When smaller standalone and privately funded B-schools are struggling to survive, they, unfortunately, cannot focus on the aspects that international agencies are looking at”. She adds that MDI Gurgaon plans to go in for EQUIS Accreditation this year.