The board of governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, (IIM-A) has approved a 5% hike in the fees for its two-year postgraduate diploma programme (PGP) in management. Fees have also been raised for the food and agri-business management (FABM) course, and for the postgraduate diploma programme for executives (PGPX). The announcement was made during a media interaction after the 53rd convocation of the institute on Saturday.
Professor Errol D’Souza, the director of IIM-A, said: “Like it is the case every year, there will be a rise in the fees but it is in line with inflation.” He said that with the revision, the PGP fees will be Rs 22 lakh. Last year, after a revision in fees of 7.7% for the academic year 2018-19, the fees had stood at Rs 21 lakh for the PGP course. “The fees for PGPX have also been increased in the same order of magnitude,” D’Souza said. Talking about the IIM-A Act, D’Souza said, “We are waiting for the government to formulate rules. We’re ready with our regulations. We will hold a board meeting when the government annouces the rules and will move into the system defined by the Act.”
Some 576 students were given their degrees at the convocation ceremony of IIM-A. These included 398 students from PGP (management) batch of 2016-18; 47 from PGP (FABM) batch of 2016-18; 115 from PGPX batch of 2017-18; and 16 from FPM. Dr Janmejaya Sinha, chairman, Asia-Pacific region, and member of the executive committee of Boston Consulting Group, was the chief guest at the convocation.
In his address, Sinha encouraged students to be worthy of themselves. “Build on your strengths. Don’t spend a lifetime trying to fix your weaknesses,” he said. “Hire people with different strengths.” During his address during the convocation ceremony, Prof D’Souza said the current times were marked by ‘extensive economic turbulence and political uncertainty’. “International alliances and trading blocks are showing signs of wear and tear,” he said. “In politics, we have extreme candidates, who at the same time are popular. The sustainability of engines of growth is in question. Our energies at the institute at such times are focussed on asking what we should be doing and helping future managers to learn to deal with these turbulent times.”
D’Souza said that a major problem of our times was growing inequality. He said that as inequality increases, people get more isolated. “We tend to live in gated communities and give more weight to the private sphere than to public spaces, as we insulate ourselves from the lives and problems of others,” he said.
