ABCD: IIT Delhi disrupts management education hierarchy in India; 6 IITs among top 20 B-Schools

IIT Delhi

The traditional table toppers in management education led by IIM-A, IIM-B and IIM-C have found an alphabetical friend -- not from their own fraternity but in IIT-Delhi, creating a new acronym for the top four B-Schools in India – ABCD.

On July 15, the union government’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2022 placed IIT Delhi at fourth place among the best B-Schools in India behind the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta.

IIT Delhi’s ranking is significant as it has been consistently doing well and is ahead of many IIMs including the ones at Kozhikode, Lucknow, and Indore ranked five, six and seven behind IIT-D.

And certainly, ahead of quality B-Schools such as XLRI Jamshedpur (ranked 8), Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon (ranked 13), S. P. Jain Institute of Management & Research (ranked 21), Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) in Delhi (ranked 24), SVKM`s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (ranked 25) and XIMB ranked 35 in the management category.

"That is ABCD of management education in India. We had set this as a target about six years ago. I am so happy this has materialised," said V. Ramgopal Rao, the former director of IIT-Delhi.

The growth in the stature of management school at the IIT Delhi is not an isolated case study. The NIRF rankings show management schools of six IITs including IIT-D have found a place in the top 20 management institutions in the country.

Other than IIT Delhi, IIT Madras’ management school was placed at 10^th rank, IIT Bombay was placed at 11^th and IIT Kharagpur was placed at 12^th. Similarly, IIT Roorkee and IIT Kanpur were placed 19^th and 20^th place respectively, in the management education league table prepared by the union government.

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The NIRF findings underline at least three important points – one, IITs are not confining their reputation as technology and engineering schools alone; two: these elite schools are adding law, humanities, environment, management and even medicine in their education offerings to grow as comprehensive institutions, and third, with autonomy and financial strength, top institutions can branch out, become interdisciplinary, and cater to the growing needs of the market.

A deeper look at the data sets show that IITs have done very well in some parameters and have a long way to go in few others. Take the example of IIT Delhi’s performance – its score in quality of publications (39.48 out of 40) is far better than IIM-A (26.74) and XLRI (20.2), MDI (22.06). In the metric for women and diversity, it is ahead of IIM-A too.

In the number of Ph.D. Students Graduated, IIT Delhi has a score of 35.13 out of 40, ahead of many standalone top B-Schools including IIFT Delhi. But IITs including IIT-D need to pull up their efforts in peer and employer perception, where the IIMs, especially the older ones, have a very high score, and in parameters like footprint of projects and professional practice.