IIMs set to increase the number of seats – Boon or bane?

The article (link below) confirms the speculation that IIMs are increasing the number of seats. It’s kind of surprising to all of us that even IIMs A, B, C and L are increasing the seats since all were speculating an increase only from IIMI and IIMK. But then, no one disagrees with the fact that IIMs are known for throwing surprises.  Most of the increase seems to be in the courses other than the regular 2 year PGP course, but IIMs K, L and B are increasing PGP seats as well. In all possibilities, IIMI would follow with an increase in a couple of years.

http://headlines.sify.com/news/fullstory.php? id=13664251&headline=IIMs~to~st

This must be some news for PGP aspirants since an increase of 100 to 200 is enormous, and a lot of the candidates in the borderline who had lost hopes would get benefited. And, more importantly, the conversion of CAT to an IIM seat is becoming easier by the day, particularly from 1995 levels after the heavy focus on IIMs. The other advantage is the increase in the pool of IIM graduates for the corporates. I guess the seat increase would continue till all IIMs have equal number of seats since the total seats in IIMs – which is hovering around 1200 now – is far less compared to the IIT pool. Ofcourse, Engineering education by itself provides lot more streams that cannot be matched by Management in variety.

The interesting part of the story is whether such a rapid increase is good for the respective institutes and for the larger interest of the IIM community. One major concern is the quality of offers that IIM graduates would get on graduation. In simpler terms, there seems to be a lot of difference (placements wise) between the students who are in the top 10 percentile from ones in the bottom ten. For example, while the top 10 percentile students (particularly in A, B and C) might get into Investment banks, the last ten percent can’t possibly dream of such stuff. Considering the fact that there is a limit in such high end offers (atleast in the short run), the increase in the seats would further augment this divide, and the competition would increase multifold since not many would want to be in the lower rung in the batch. This could have a direct impact on the extra-curricular activities and other interests. For example, with my little experience, I could note that students would normally fall into two broad categories: One category is those who make sure that they don’t miss a single thing academics-wise, and others who participate a lot in other activities – which could include sports, clubs, functions etc. Ofcourse there are some who do both and achieve both. But if the batch size increases and if there is a huge difference in placements between the top 10 and bottom 10, students would easily attribute it to academics and hence would stop concentrating on other interests, which *might* not be good in the long run to the institute and the students. Excessive competition isn’t that healthy! 

Other B-schools might also get affected since the top sect tend choose IIMs before the rest. All said and done, it would be interesting to see the developments that await us.