Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB, Hyderabad

THE Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad has been on a rollercoaster ride in the last one year. Its placements got mauled due to the carnage in Wall Street. Then came the Satyam fiasco. But the institute weathered the storm and emerged unscathed. The recent Financial Times ranking places the school at No12.

Ajit Rangnekar, ISB's new Dean must be happy. He talks to B Mahesh Sarma, Editor, Careers360, about rankings, alumni, comparisons with Indian B-Schools, reasons for ISB operating outside the regulatory regime and more.

Q. If we go by the parameters of the FT ranking, ISB has shown a marked improvement. Was it because of a conscious effort?
A. To be very honest with you, I don’t worry too much about the actual ranking, now. You really have no control over it, but what you have a control over is what you actually do.  We do go through all these parameters but I often struggle to understand what we can do about it. Sometimes I do feel a little embarrassed about saying that but the truth is, I can control only two things. One is the quality of education that we impart and second, to some extent, is the quality of research we do.  We can also counsel our students, work with them. Again, you don’t do it for ranking but just because it is the right thing to do.

Q. Your alumni has rated you much better this year than last year...
A. When you think of the alumni body, it is a long continuum.  A person who has been in the industry for twenty years will have a completely different set of requirements compared to someone who has been in the industry for only ten years and someone who has just graduated.  So, how do we meet these varying needs, at what stages do we give varying interventions that are frankly cost-effective because I can’t afford to be spending all my time and money on it.

Last year, I spent over two months understanding alumni feedback and met around 500 alumni (of 1,500).  The simple question I asked them was, “What else do you want us to do for you as a student?”    That is the question we are actually grappling with, I don’t think we have an answer yet.  But that is something that I am personally, absolutely committed to do.

Q. In general there is an opinion that the PGPX programmes of IIMs are comparable to ISB’s programme…
A. Yes, to some extent, the comparison should really be with the PGPX, although interestingly they have gone one notch higher than us with respect to experience, they made it seven years minimum. But the difference then is that they have a very narrow band of 7-10 years. Whereas we have 2-20s of experience band. Let’s be honest about it. I would always love to find a comparison for my institute as it also enables
me to learn... 

Q. Another thing that is said about the FT ranking is that the methodology is skewed.  Would you agree?
A. I don’t believe it.  I think that is true for BusinessWeek, which is why we didn’t go there.  It’s not only skewed towards Western schools; it is skewed towards US schools whereas FT tends to be far more international. And If we don’t  want to be ranked internationally, it’s always good to say, okay that is the set of rules.  But, nothing stops us from developing very local, very different set of rules ourselves.  Then, it is a marketing job, convincing other people that this is a better set of parameters by which you should be valued.

Q. What would be the directions for evolving those sets of rules?
A. I think one is impact; what impact has been created in the society. If all I am going to do is be content in placing my students in high-paying jobs, I am failing the nation.  Number two is the level of transformation that I have created.  So, impact is to scope and transformation is the depth.  So, have I been able to transform any significant part of society? It could be industry or some change in terms of a mission in life. I think that would be wonderful.  Have we created focused knowledge that people can use to transform, these are difficult things.  And the fourth thing is, what all of us as a nation need to do is ask ‘What are the values and beliefs of the people in our nation?’ All of these are very difficult.

Q. ISB is an experiment outside the regulatory regime of the country and a successful one at that. Is there a conscious choice to reside outside the common regime?
A. Yes. What has happened is that in the current regulatory framework, if you look at it in their literal write-ups, we are not be able to take as many students as we currently do. There is a limit, there is a maximum. Then, there are limitations in terms of curriculum, there are restrictions in every single thing that you do.  So, it really reduces your freedom to work, that is Number One. Number Two is that we are not closed to the concept of regulation, we voluntarily exceed all the norms that have been set.

But we have chosen not to go for accreditation because of the other constraints. At some stage, we are hoping that the government will come up with a new set of norms which all of us can subscribe to. On the other hand, I will also say this in defence of the regulatory regime that the normal Indian tendency to abuse any regulation makes the regulator always move towards the commander-in-control. I think we as an industry are as much to be blamed.

Q. It is very difficult to get measurable data from schools.  And verifying the data is out of question…
A. Yes, and it is equally true in terms of all these claims people make in terms of placements.  God knows how many of them are reliable, we have claims that some company offers so much for placement.  We know some of those firms have come to ISB, we know they have set norms in terms of offers.

In fact, one of the things we started doing three years back is we stopped mentioning the highest figure.  It’s a horrible measure, which gives all the wrong messages.  It’s actually morally, ethically and in every way wrong.  Actually, that year we had a very high salary and we thought ‘No, we’re not going to do it.’ Last year what we did is, we are all taking about mean but we should actually look at median.  So we actually started reporting the median last year because that is a more accurate number. The other thing we are looking at is the 80 percent average, if we the top ten and bottom ten percent.

Q. How does ISB measure the output of its faculty, especially the younger ones? 
A.  Our primary measure is research, the publication output in top 25 journals. Roughly it is, 70% for research, 20% for teaching and 10% for institution building activities.   

Q. Would that roughly mean two courses a year in terms of teaching?
A. Yes, like our young faculty does about eighty hours a year of teaching.  The rest, is in their own interest, you don’t have to mandate anything. 

Q. One last question. Why is ISB not offering a PhD programme?
A. We will, now that we have enough human resources. We had our own series of issues, the faculties wanted to make sure about various things.  Firstly, the concern was we can’t really offer a PhD kind of PhD. And secondly, how can we meet the aspirations of the students especially in terms of the PhD students’ careers also.  If we want to place them in the second tier schools in India, what is the point?  Whereas, if we want to be placing them in top schools outside, do we have the network, do we have the ability?  So, we will go through all those questions now and hopefully by 2011 we should.  And we are hoping, now, when the new regime comes it will allow us to do that.