Since the vast majority of aspirants for business management education have to choose from among 6,000 B-schools, the majority of them privately promoted, the annual EWIHER solely ranks the country’s Top 100 private B-schools, writes Dilip Thakore

ISB’s Prof. R.S. Thirumalai (centre)

Since 2013, the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings designed to facilitate the selection of suitable higher education institutions for further study, have rated and ranked the country’s best government and private B-schools separately. Although initially we also rated and ranked the most well-reputed among the 20 Central government-promoted IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management), after a few years your editors decided to drop them from the EWIHER on the ground that they monotonously topped the annual B-school rankings generating a sense of déjà vu. Moreover despite being awarded huge campuses and premises by the Union government, the IIMs annually admit a mere 2 percent of graduate students who write their joint Common Admission Test (CAT). The vast majority of aspirants for business management education have to choose one or other of 6,000 B-schools the majority of them privately promoted. Therefore for the past seven years the annual EWIHER solely rates and ranks the country’s Top 100 private B-schools.

Ab initio the league table of India’s Top 100 private B-schools has been dominated by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (ISB) promoted in 2001 by the biggest names in India Inc, including the Bros Ambani, Adi Godrej, Bros Goenka among others. Sprawled over a 260-acre state-of-the-art campus in Gachibowli, a suburb of Hyderabad, ISB is not ‘recognised’ by AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) because its flagship postgrad compressed business management study programme is of 13-months duration against the standard 24-months programme mandated by AICTE. But ISB is routinely ranked above the IIMs by the London-based Financial Times and its MBA graduates are snapped up by Indian and offshore companies at remuneration packages equaling and often exceeding the premier ABC (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) IIMs.