Click to read Part 1 of the interview
Which according to you are NITIE’s peer institutes?
NITIE features along with the IIMs, IITs and IISc (Bangalore) in the Union HRD Ministry’s list of the top centres of excellence in India. Earlier, both XLRI (Jamshedpur) and FMS (University of Delhi) were in the same league too but lately they seem to have gone on a low profile.
Also, it is a misnomer that NITIE is a ‘sectoral b-school’, since we create the same job profiles as that of any of the IIMs.
Which brings us to, what do you think of b-school rankings?
We think they are misnomers. Although we do give the ranking agencies feedback and our students fill their forms.
However, few isolated points made in the rankings do make us want to look back in introspection.
What are the pros and cons of being a government funded institute?
A government institute enjoys a certain credibility that private institutes do not. With a government institute, people take a certain level of quality and commitment for granted. The government on its side earnestly strives to make their institutes centres of excellence.
As for the cons, bringing about changes takes time. Say, if a government institute wants to open a centre abroad, long procedures have to be followed. But the long process always ends up in a more thorough job than private institutes would do. Also, private institutes are profit-oriented, so they open and close centres at will. A government institute’s centre once opened, even if it follows slow processes, is always there to stay.
All the top international universities like Harvard, Stanford are private. Will government institutes ever be competitive on a global level?
The Indian society is different. Here, we look up to the government for everything essential in life. Our private sector has not really evolved much. Though there are good institutes like BITS (Pilani) and at Manipal, the real excellence in India is only in government institutes like the IITs and IIMs.
Do our students value education much with the existence of subsidies?
To encourage meritocracy in India, subsidies are a necessity. Much of our talent is in the rural areas, I have seen it myself. To encourage this talent towards merit, education has to be affordable. Take a close look at the profile of many of our CEOs in Indian companies, I’d
say half of them are from a rural background. If education is made expensive, I believe many meritorious people will be left out.
Also do note the fact that despite having earned with some work experience, most b-school students have to take loans to pay even for the subsidized fees.
How do you rate a school like Indian School of Business, Hyderabad in the Indian scenario?
It is a one-year course and different from ours. I believe ISB is a school for people with work experience to upgrade their skills. You do some work, then you join ISB for a major upgradation of skills and move further. ISB does not cater much to beginners. However, ISB’s management programme is not AICTE recognized, so one can’t go for higher studies after ISB.
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How subjective is a selection process like NITIE’s, where you judge students’ caliber through a tally of numbers? Are the parameters open for public knowledge?
It is quite subjective, because we use a large number of parameters. People from both academic side as well as industry are called for judging the group discussions and personal interviews, so the final tally takes into account a vast range of details. For example, the group discussions are judged by experts and professors of organizational behaviour and behavioral psychology. The 25 minutes duration of a group discussion is enough for them to make an accurate judgement of a student.
The parameters are not open for public knowledge. But we consider more than one tally and if the student makes it across any of the cutoffs in these tallies, we give the admission.
Also, b-schools are still evolving in India, so the process will refine itself over time.
So when the final decision of whether to take a student in or not is made, are only the tallies considered? Does any member of the admissions committee have the power of selecting a student who just missed the tally by a very low margin, because he might have shown promise not measurable in numbers?
No. Only the numbers are considered. Nobody has an overriding control on final selection.
Tell us any 3 Dos and DONTs for a student qualified for NITIE’s GD-PI stage.
DOs
1- Be honest, most importantly to yourself
2- Have confidence
3- Stick to your conviction
DONTs
1- Do not lie
2- Do not boss around in the GD, don’t make it a shouting match
3- Do not hesitate in starting the discussion. Be a leader
Also keep in mind that the content of what you speak is important and not how much you speak.
How important is a student’s undergraduate performance in the selection process?
Only those engineering graduates who have graduated with first class are eligible to reach NITIE’s GD-PI process. Once at the GD-PI stage, they are all on the same plane as far as undergraduate performance is concerned.
What kind of a student is best fit to be in NITIE?
We look at how confident the student is, how clear is the communication, whether he or she is fit to be in a management profession or a research environment. Then we see how truthful the student is, the capability to handle stress and put in the best at the same time, honesty, integrity and sincerity. Also, we say, do not answer a question when you don’t know it. It’s better than making a bad attempt. Management is a subject of practice. Passing a management course is easy, but practising management requires skills. We look at that potential.
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What is your current intake and do you plan to increase it?
We currently take in a batch of 120, and there are no plans for expansion immediately.
Why is the intake so low, considering that American b-schools take in over 700 in a batch?
I agree there is good talent in the country, but an institute must have enough faculty and sufficient infrastructure to support a large intake.
Why is it that alumni of Indian b-schools do not give back financially to their alma-mater?
I think it is because they spend a very less amount of time in a management course to develop an emotional bonding. They spend two years here, but mostly it is an in-and-out kind of affair.
The reason why the IITs get donations from their alumni is because they spend four fundamental years of their lives there.
With b-schools in India, somewhere the emotional bonding is lacking.
Do you think it is because somewhere the alumni does not think that b-school education added much to their success?
I don’t think that is the reason. B-school adds a lot to not only career, but also personal moulding.
Thank you very much, sir for the interview.
It has been a pleasure, thank you.