IIMs to share admission information

NEW DELHI: To ensure that no seat in the new IIMs remains vacant and to ease the pressure on students, the premier B-schools will share admission information among them and post individual admission criteria in their websites.

Besides, the IIMs will look into the possibilities of offering programmes in non-core areas like health, education and infrastructure, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said today.

Sibal, who chaired a meeting of heads of all the 13 IIMs here, said there was "broad consensus" among the directors on most of the issues including coordination on the counselling system and on the number of teaching hours.

Talking to reporters about sharing admission information, he said the move will ensure reduced pressure on the old IIMs in matters of admission and equal distribution of candidates.

He said IIMs would now increasingly focus on the social sector on problems of relevance to the society and there was a "consensus that we must shift away from business to non-core areas".

According to Sibal, an expert group would be constituted to chalk out the requirements of the Indian economy and other fields like health, education, infrastructure where IIMs expertise could be put to good use.

"IIMs will take a lead in conducting programmes and develop curricula relevant to the specific fields such as health management and agriculture management," he said.

Every three years there would be an external review of each IIM to weed out any deficiency in them and correct any shortcomings, he said.

Sibal made it clear while it not its intention to interfere in the functioning of IIMs, the government should "have powers to interfere in cases of aberrations".