ABSTRACT
Formal management education in independent India started with a vision for a ‘National Institute of Management’ and university programmes that would create manager–leaders for both state and private sector-led industrial development. The national institute took the form of two Indian Institutes of Management, set up through a unique private–public partnership. With the advent of liberalisation, a new wave of private business schools that oriented their programmes to the corporate sector and the transformed private sector within the country emerged. This chapter presents a profile of the private sector as of 2018–2019 using the All India Survey of Higher Education, 2018–2019 (AISHE) and data from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). According to AISHE, there are 6,978 institutionsuniversities, colleges, and standalone institutesoffering 10,735 courses (programmes of study) ranging from doctoral-level courses to certificate programs; 81 per cent of the institutions and 76 per cent of the courses are in private institutions. Half of the colleges and about 40 per cent of the standalone institutes were established in the period 2001–2010. The private sector accounts for about 75 per cent of student enrolment, with the unaided, self-financed private sector accounting for a significant 65 per cent. In addition, there are AICTE-approved standalone programmes, not captured by AISHE. This chapter estimates a total of 1.54 million students in 13,435 management education courses or programmes (all levels); 1.19 million (77.5 per cent) are in the private sector.
This chapter draws on the unit-level data for 2018–2019 made available by AISHE. See aishe.nic.in, for details of the methodology and scope. The database provides an overview of the inputs–institutional infrastructure, courses, enrolment, and so on. However, the data is aggregated at the course, programme, or institutional levels and student-level outcomes, for instance, scholarships received, or other student-performance indicators, are not available. The ‘broad discipline category’ used was ‘Management’ (code: 18), with ‘disciplines’ (sub-fields) included being Business Management, Financial Management, Hotel Management, Marketing Management, Tourism Management, Other Management, Agri-Business Management, Business Administration, Business Studies, Event Management, Hospital Administration, Human Resource Management, International Business, Pharmaceutical Technology and Technology Management. Note that the AICTE database classifies Hotel Management as a separate category. (No attempt to impute missing values in certain fields such as social category of students was made).
This chapter also examines the blurring of the distinctions between ‘public’ and ‘private’ through the phenomenon of ‘self-financed’ courses and the convergence among the top-ranked institutes in both sectors through their adoption of the corporatised practices of management education such as accreditation, rankings, internationalisation, and specialisation. About 68 per cent of the courses in management (all levels) are self-financed. While the phenomenon is obvious in the private sector (78 per cent), it is visible in the public institutions as well28 per cent of the courses in the public universities and 46 per cent in the public colleges are self-financed. About 70 per cent of the total enrolment in management is in self-financed courses, with 56 per cent of the enrolment in the universities being in self-financed courses. Institutes at the top of various rankings may be seen to be following practices that are in conformity with national or global standards. For the vast majority of institutes, whether in the public sector or in the private, such recognition does not seem relevant at this moment. Their problems are more mundanetrying to attract enough students to fill up available seats, faculty to teach, and companies to employ their graduates. Observers of management education have noted that most of the institutes that focus only on general management will become irrelevant, and burdened by their poor quality, will have to disappear. Those that adapt to the emerging demand for specialisations in management, acknowledging the changes in the workplace and technology, have better chances of survival. The National Education Policy 2020, with its emphasis on large sizes and multi-disciplinarity, is likely to impact the standalone and smaller management institutes significantly.
