Management Education in India

Management Education in India - which started a little less than half a century ago - has made rapid strides over the past decade. Today, an MBA or an equivalent degree is looked at by many as a passport to a good career - a career which is highly challenging and extremely rewarding.

The process of liberalisation which started in India in 1991 led to a major spurt in the demand for management graduates. Organisations from a variety of industries - ranging from proprietorship firms to large MNCs including a number of MNCs - started recruiting management graduates from Indian management institutes by offering them fat pay packets. Click here to know more about the remuneration levels that management graduates are offered.

This increase for management graduates, in turn, gave a major fillip to the demand for management education in the country which resulted in mushrooming of institutes/university departments offering management education. It is estimated that that there are around 1000 institutes at present offering post-graduate courses in management in India. The quality of these institutes ranges from world class at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to abysmal at some of the badly run management institutes. Unfortunately, not all institutes offer management education, which is of excellent quality. Only some of these management institutes can be regarded as being worth joining by students.

To get into a management institute, one has to go through a selection process which includes written test, Group Discussion/Interview, etc. Click here to know more about the Admission Process adopted by management institutes in India.

There are a large number of management entrance exams in the country. Some of these exams are used by multiple institutes as a part of their respective admission processes. The prominent among such exams are

CAT - Entrance test for 6 IIMs and more than 80+ management schools
XAT - XLRI and other 50 + institutes consider this test for admission
ATMA - Accepted by more than 100 management schools
MAT - Accepted by more than 100 management schools
JMET - IITs

There are a few management institutes conducting their own entrance exams. Some of the reputed among them are FMS, IIFT, IRMA, Symbiosis, NMIMS, etc.

In addition, there are Common Entance Tests (CETs) conducted by some states for the MBA courses offered by all the universities in their respective states.