ABSTRACT
The Indian Institutes of Management Act 2017 declares IIMs as institutions of national importance with a mandate to attain standards of “global excellence in management, management research and allied areas of knowledge”. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 expects IIMs (along with other stand-alone institutions) to move beyond their core strength – management education – and fashion themselves as large, multidisciplinary universities in a phased manner over a period of 15 years. This chapter explores and outlines some of the challenges involved in this envisaged and ambitious shift towards a higher educational system prescribed by NEP 2020 and the future that it holds for IIMs. It particularly focuses on issues such as academic freedom and institutional autonomy in relation to new structures of governance informing the higher education in general.
