It’s placements season at Indian business schools and the union HRD minister has whipped up a fresh controversy by advocating pre-screening of b-school placement reports before they are made public. It may be recalled that the minister’s remarks about Internet censorship many weeks back received widespread condemnation.
Speaking at a seminar on educational reforms, the minister said: “It’s a well known fact that b-schools inflate their placement figures, distort the content and paint a misleading picture of their placement scenario. So I think it is extremely important to pre-screen b-school placement reports before they are published. My ministry is working on a policy to make it mandatory for all b-schools to get their placement reports corroborated by an independent audit agency. This would rein in the practice of distorting facts and figures and thus would enhance the credibility of the placement reports and also the b-schools. If you are an Institute of Publicity Management, it doesn’t matter what you say about your institute/placement figures etc because anyway you don’t have any credibility and people wouldn’t be fooled. You can confidently claim that you have already been voted No.1 in international exposure in the year 2025. There’s no problem. But when you have a huge brand name, you have to be responsible.”
Naturally, this move has received criticism from b-schools that are ready with their placement report templates of three Rs 1 crore+ offers, four students signing out of the placement process to pursue their dream of entrepreneurship and a nice pie chart showing a neat distribution of finance, sales & marketing, general management, consulting, SCM & operations, IT & other profiles. “Let the minister focus on inflation in the prices of essential commodities and not on the inflation in the placement report figures,” said the head of ROFL Institute of Management (RIM) ~ one of the most sought-after management institutes in the country.
The minister has found some supporters too. Some alumni of premier Indian management institutes have welcomed the move. “This is a step in the right direction,” said a person who wished not to be named from a b-school that he wished not be named. “It is absurd to include things like the maximum possible performance-based incentive (which even the founder-CEO does not get) and then converting the figure from pounds to INR. Also, the figures have to be PPP adjusted. Companies do things like including one-time joining bonus to their annual CTC, and even include ESOPs that accumulate over several years and have a vesting period of many years in the CTC. There should be some penal provisions wherein the b-school concerned should be punished if the monthly take-home salary is less than 50 per cent of the monthly CTC quoted in the placement report,” he said.
Mr Rahul Sharma, a member of the placement committee at one of the top b-schools criticised the idea saying: “The HRD minister would not accept the 2G scam loss assessment of Rs 1.76 lakh crore by CAG but wants the b-school placement reports to be audited. This is ridiculous. Moreover, we use a standard template for the placement report every year with slight modifications to the previous year’s report (like a 10 per cent increase in average salary over the previous year). If the new policy comes into place and if we are forced to present the actual facts and figures, we have to entirely revamp our placement report template. It’s going to be a daunting task. I appeal to the minister to not take such drastic measures.”
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