The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, has entered into a global partnership with Cems, an elite club of 28 business schools of the world, that will enable it to offer a double master’s degree to select students at the time of passing out. The IIM-C administration calls this the first step towards “globalisation”.
Cems was earlier known as the Confederation of European Management Schools, but the nomenclature changed recently when it decided to open its doors to elite B-schools beyond Europe. The London School of Economics, HEC France, Essade Spain, HKUST Hong Kong andRichard Ivy from Canada are members of Cems. It still does not accept membership from B-schools in the US.
IIM-C will be the first Indian B-school to be part of Cems when it signs the deal in November. It went through a year-long vetting where IIM-C’s curriculum, teaching and examination techniques, achievements of students and placements were considered. The clinching factor for IIM-C was its focus on quantitative courses – those with a hint on operations management and finance, heavily depending on maths and statistics. That apart, IIM-C is the only one in the IIM chain to have a management centre for human values, which won it brownie points.
Being a Cems member would mean that select IIM-C students will now get the coveted Masters in Management Programme degree, better known worldwide as the MIM degree which has been consistently rated as one of the five best global management degrees. The institute is modifying its two-year flagship programmes so that the top 27 students can also get the MIM degree at the time of graduating from IIM-C. Students who enter from the 2013 academic year will be eligible for the new course.
“We limit the opportunity to 27 students because each student would be attending course modules framed by the 27 other member B-schools of Cems on their respective campuses. To attain this double degree a student will have to put in at least 75 hours of extra classroom contact apart from international projects that he/she will have to do. This is over and above attending the IIM-C curriculum and exams,” explained Ashoke Banerjee, IIM-C dean.
Students would be selected for the programme only after their first-year results have been declared. After completing the first term of the second year, selected students will have to attend classes for three months at a Cems member school abroad, and return to IIM-C for the final term. “The curriculum of such students in the second year here will also include extra modules designed keeping the MIM degree in mind,” explained Banerjee.
The institute will tie up with several foreign companies so that those selected for the Cems course will complete their summer internship with them and submit the mandatory international project.
