IIM Indore’s UAE campus was never a success

IIM Indore’s UAE campus was never a success

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 01:37 AM IST
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Indore : Though Indian Institute of Management Indore claimed that it’s shutting down its Dubai campus due to regulatory issues, the fact remains that the facility was never a success and was bound to close down as it drew controversies also.

Since its inception in 2011, the centre had been seeing poor admissions. It was getting only a handful of students every year. The first batch of post-graduate programme in management in 2012 witnessed nearly 18 students. The following batches also failed to draw satisfactory numbers.

So much so, all the students admitted to the UAE campus were Indians. This fact invited flaks from academic circle that alleged that the centre in UAE was opened to give a backdoor entry to students who fail to secure berth in IIMs through Common Admission Test (CAT).

IIM Indore Director Prof Rishikesha T Krishnan’s pain on this matter had come to fore during his interaction with members of the Media and Corporate Communication Committee of the institute’s UAE campus in March last year.

“IIM- Indore is the first IIM to offer the flagship PGP programme outside India. This is a great initiative but if it is to fulfill our global goals fully, we would like to see students from different nationalities and not from India alone,” he had said.

A few months after the interaction, the IIM Indore had shifted the campus from Ras al-Khaimah to Dubai hoping to get students with different nationalities but to no avail.

The IIM Indore received less than 15 applications for 2014-16 PGP batch at Dubai after which it suspended the batch citing unforeseen reasons. The following batch was also cancelled and an official announcement to pack up after July 25 was made on Monday.

IIM Indore media in-charge said: “We decided to discontinue our programmes in Dubai primarily due to the general regulatory climate in the UAE.”

Sources said that the IIM Indore had a dispute with the UAE government that wanted the institute to get its courses accredited from local agencies and appoint full-fledged faculty at the campus. “The IIM Indore accepted the suggestions, it decided to wind up from the UAE,” the sources added.

Besides the admission woes and regulatory issues, the institute had also faced financial bungling cases that had brought the then IIM Indore chairman LN Jhunjhunwal and then director Prof Ravichandra face-to-face.

The logistic partner of IIM Indore at Ras-Al-Khaimah was given right to collect fees from students and subsequently deposit the same at mother branch.

But two cheques worth Rs 32 lakh given by the logistic partner were dishonoured. Jhunjhunwal said that he was kept in dark over the matter and citing financial bungling had put in his papers as chairman. The matter hogged limelight for quite some days.

Ravichandran, who was instrumental behind the UAE campus told Free Press that IIM-I must have evaluated the regulatory challenges and taken a decision to discontinue the facility.

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