This is placement season at business schools. But come September, the season for business school (B-school) rankings will begin.
At last count there were at least seven different rankings in print. These rankings essentially cater to four sets of people: Aspiring B-school students, current B-school students, B-schools themselves and the corporates who recruit from them.
In a country with more than 1,500 B-schools, the decision of which B-schools to apply to often hinges on the published B-school rankings. It becomes a factor of elimination.
Consequently, for B-schools, it makes a lot of sense to appear in and perform well on the parameters these rankings are based on. It is a sure shot of way of garnering some visibility in today's cluttered competitive space.
Visibility with a decent rank means more students applying and with the price of a single application form touching around Rs 1,000; it also means more revenue for the B-school.
The current crop of B-school students gets to profit from this third party statistic as well. A good ranking gives one the prominence to attract better companies. The placement process for B-schools that starts in early December and goes on till March follows immediately after these rankings have come out.
So a good ranking is a part of the marketing package a B-school uses to make its pitch.
Finally, the corporates also turn to these rankings to make their crucial decision of where to source their human capital from. Most recruitment managers tend to return to their alma maters or a select set of B-schools bequeathed to them through their corporate traditions.
The old boys network of B-schools, firmly entrenched in a company, ensures that the company keeps going back to the same B-schools for recruitment, even though the B-school might no longer be as good as it used to be.
What breaks this cycle is a decision by the firm to change its recruitment policy and when that happens, space is created for other B-schools to finally infiltrate. And the institutes most favorably positioned are those that manage a good appearance in the rankings.
Since corporates have no other objective surveys to turn to, magazine rankings become the unquestioned source.
The biggest profiteer from this whole process is, of course, the publication, which brings out the ratings. The issue, which carries the rankings, is swarmed by advertisements of those featured in the rankings. The ones that haven't also advertise since this is a priceless space of high visibility among prospective applicants.
So, do these rankings serve their purpose of delineating the relative strengths and weaknesses of a B-school?
The answer is an unfortunate no.
This would have been possible if there was some semblance of consistency from one rank chart to another. But the apparent standing of B-schools in any two ratings is so disparate that a student cannot intelligently collate both. Before deciding amongst B-schools, he must decide amongst the rankings. A B-school, which is in the top 5 in one ranking, is not in the top 15 of another ranking in the same year. A situation like this ends up creating confusion.
What affects the objectivity of these rankings is the fact that, often some of the best B-schools decide not to participate in them. This leads to a situation wherein other B-schools end up at positions higher than they would have and this they exploit to the hilt.
This led to a peculiar situation a few years back when a Delhi-based B-school ended up the fourth best B-school in all of Asia in a survey carried out by the newsmagazine, Asiaweek. This it exploited to the hilt by highlighting this ranking in all its advertisements. It was an entirely different issue that most of the top Indian B-schools had decided to give this ranking a miss.
A Mumbai-based B-school is known not too participate in many surveys (It has participated in the latest surveys to have come out), though it is one of the best in the country and its alumni work for some of the best corporations in India and abroad.
On the other extreme, there are schools that claim top positions on the basis of age-old surveys that have clearly outlived their scope. Then there is the case of unheard-of institutes ending up at top positions in a ranking throwing doubts on the veracity and raising questions of unfair influence.
At other times some of the best B-schools drop out of the Top 10 list one year only to be back with a bang the very next year. This leaves one wondering what earth-shattering change did they bring about in one year.
A few rankings place more than one B-school on a particular rank but do not adjust the subsequent rankings, i.e. if there are two institutes on the fourth place the next institute should be on the sixth place and not fifth. All this ends up distorting the entire picture.
Most of the surveys construct their final ranking using parameters like placement record, faculty profile, size of campus, number of journals, number of computers, library, etc. Since the stakes involved for most B-schools are very high, some of them tend to stretch the truth by often over-declaring on these parameters.
With so many B-schools involved it's not always feasible for the ranking agency to check up each and every piece of information. The result is false information making its way into the process.
The positive spin-off from these rankings is that schools try to improve on the parameters they are ranked on. This has led to, for example, to more B-school faculty writing research papers. Whether this will aid in genuine dissemination of knowledge or end up fulfilling the superficial goal of going up the charts remains to be seen.
All in all, the current ranking process confounds more and illuminates less. And it simultaneously lacks the rigid control and objectivity to prevent each stakeholder from maximising their personal gain in a way that suits them the most.
Vivek Kaul is Research Scholar, ICFAI University; and Priyanka Pulla is a freelance writer.