PhD at IIM attracting mid-career executives: IIM-Kozhikode director

MUMBAI: The pandemic and the resultant economic slowdown has sparked a return of sorts among the diaspora, some of who are retracing their steps to enrol in a premier Indian B-school for mid-career PhDs.


Having graduated on a foreign campus and gained work experience, they will soon be starting doctoral studies at

IIM-Kozhikode

on issues they grappled with at the workplace. The institute, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, is ranked in thought leadership among the top 20 management training institutes worldwide.

“People are coming… we are getting serious talent to do their courses (here). Now the first PhD (management) practice track programme has attracted people from

Korea

, from

the United States of America

,” said IIMK director Debashis Chatterjee.


He said these were Indians “working in top organizations, they want to become an IIM, PhD based on the problems they faced in their jobs…As long as there are problems, I think we are ripe for innovation.”

Chatterjee who spoke of the altering landscape at the IIMs, has been at the helm of Kozhikode since its inception. The institute’s rise came with a championing of gender diversity – 30% of faculty and 54% of students are women – and the challenge it posed to long-held assumptions in the IIM culture.

“Every five years you have to reinvent yourself. So we started mid-career MBA programs,

online MBA programs

, our greatest increase in enrolment is mid-career students. They want to catch up with what’s happening out there,” said Chatterjee.

Speaking about online teaching and learning amid the pandemic, he said, the social context of engagement has proven to be a problem because “in picking out talent or disseminating knowledge, digital media is efficient, but not fully sufficient…

high tech

cannot replace high touch. I am desperate to have students back in class.”