ISB ranked 15th by FT

ISB has proved that it is no one-day wonder by climbing up in the latest FT rankings to 15th position from last year's 20th. Check out FT Rankings 2009.

I'm sure all the ISBians are greatly elated. While none of the ranking mechanisms can fully capture the picture completely, it can act as a proxy. This would surely attract more number of international students adding to the diversity at ISB.

India surely needs more schools such as ISB considering the Human Resources and the demographic dividend that we boast of. We seem to be moving in two extremes - on one side we have countless number of colleges that offer MBA's or the equivalent there are only few colleges that produce MBA's who count. Either the existing colleges tighten the belt and start treating MBA as a course not similar to MCA or some other course or let new colleges that understand the essence of MBA be set up.

The over focus we have on the result that too the short-term puts too much stress on the system. Even though ISB or the other top colleges give no assurance of placements, I can safely claim that more than 80-90% of applicants believe that admission to ISB means a salary 20% more than the average (interesting statistic, isn't it).

We need more and more entrepreneurs and I hope the system becomes a facilitator rather than being the enormous hindrance, which is what it is now. To get into a job, you need no license but to get into a business, you need 101 clearances and to acquire them you have to graft the officials. Lots of energy gets drowned in overcoming the system. It is further more funny to see the politicians claiming the achievements of private sector as their despite the fact that the private sector not only has to earn and ROE but also to pay for the grafts.

This time placements at ISB would be a different game compared to last year and I hope that the challenging times would bring out some bright entrepreneurial diamonds. Good luck Co 09