With the proliferation of rankings, newspaper articles about business schools and countless speculations of media agencies, coaching classes, online forums and so on, there is a large amount of information available to an aspiring MBA student regarding placements. However, this data may or may not be helpful to students as different aspects of placements are highlighted by different institutes. Students are hence, not able to compare placements across certain set parameters. Moreover, speculations about salaries figures have always been rife in the media and the IIMA community has often had to respond to reports with clarifications leading to criticism of the institute.
Thus, IIM Ahmedabad has taken the initiative to introduce the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS) that can be used by business schools uniformly to report placements.
The need for these is evident as many potential MBAs look at reports of placements and salaries to make a decision as to which B-School to join. The reporting standards seek to present information on placements in a clear manner with defined parameters which will facilitate easy comparison. The data is also relevant to current students who are usually privy to inflated CTC figures and will now know their salary break-up. The biggest step taken is to ensure that the data is audited by a reliable agency. This verified data would then be made available to the general public i.e. existing and prospective students, recruiters, media and ranking agencies and other stakeholders. IIMA has been working hard with other business schools to carry forward this initiative.
The introduction of these standards took place in 4 stages. They were first proposed in October 2010 at the IIMA Recruiter Conclave in Mumbai. Post this; a draft of the standards was prepared and circulated among students, other B-schools, recruiters and the media. The suggestions and revisions were discussed and incorporated at the Placement Reporting Conference held at the IIMA campus in June this year. Finally on the basis of these standards, the IIMA placement reports for PGP, PGP-ABM and PGP-X final placements were released on the 7th of September. Several notable institutes have adopted the IPRS, the full list of which can be found at the IPRS website.
Audited by CRISIL, the IIMA Placement Report concisely classifies the offers given on the basis of function, location and salary. These clearly demarcated heads allow for easy comparison between B-Schools and also for complete transparency in presentation of the data. The reception of this fully audited report was highly positive with most media agencies and stakeholders commending the step.
It is hoped that truthfulness and fairness in placement reporting is adopted among all major business schools in the country. The IPRS represent the willingness of some B-schools to take a step towards publishing verified reports in the interest of all stakeholders. Over time, the practice of releasing unaudited reports will hopefully be discontinued and all B-schools will see the merit in subscribing to the IPRS.
The members of IPRS and audited placement reports can be found at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/iprs/members.php
More information on the IPRS can be found at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/iprs/index.php
Some of the responses the IIMA community has posted to inflated salary reporting can be found at:
https://insideiima.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/the-truth-about-b-school-salaries/
Inside IIMA 