The majority of the management students at IIMs, premier management institutes of the country are from engineering background. This year, in the batch of 2015, the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Indore and Kozhikode had 83 per cent to 95 per cent engineers.
“The expansion of engineering colleges in India is far more and therefore, the talent pool is much larger. We do not have a similar strength among non-engineering students,” says IIM Lucknow director Devi Singh.
IIMs have long been facing the heat for becoming strongholds of engineering talent, particularly that from the IITs. And it’s not necessarily for lack of trying. Earlier this month, IIM Ahmedabad changed its selection criteria for admissions to the PGP batch of 2014-16 in a bid to get fewer engineers and more freshers on board.
Harvard law professor Ashish Nanda who has just been appointed IIM-A director, recently emphasised the need for diversity and how engineers would henceforth face a tougher challenge to get through to the institute. Meanwhile, IIM Calcutta awarded points for academic diversity at the bachelor’s degree and post-graduate level at the final selection stage for its 2013-15 batch. IIM Lucknow too listed out academic disciplines that would merit diversity points in this year’s incoming batch. But all this has done precious little to change the overall scheme of things.
In fact, at IIM Lucknow, the number of non-engineers has gone down from around 79 for the 2012-14 batch to 59-odd this time around. In Bangalore, it went from 42 in a batch of 377 last year to 36 out of 403 this time. IIM Calcutta, IIM Indore and IIM Kozhikode registered increases in non-engineers, but their overall numbers as compared to batch sizes was insignificant.
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