Ending a year-long tussle with the government, the Indian Institutes of Management on Wednesday agreed to provide 'all types of support' for setting up six new B-schools in the country which are expected to start functioning from the coming academic session.
At a meeting with higher education secretary R P Agrawal, the IIM directors came on board to extend their expertise in establishing new B-schools.
Earlier, the IIMs had expressed their reservation to the idea of mentoring the new IIMs after which the government set up a committee to evolve a suitable module to start the new IIMs.
The three-member committee, comprising director of IIM Ahmedabad Sameer Barua, IIM Kolkata director Sekhar Chaudhury and IIT Kanpur director S G Dhande, also did not favour the idea of mentoring.
"But in today's meeting, the IIM directors gave positive indications to provide all types of support for setting up of the new IIMs. We expect the new IIMs would start functioning from the coming academic session," a top source, who was present at the meeting, told PTI.
The government has decided to set up six IIMs in the states of Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Haryana.
The government had planned that the existing IIMs would mentor the new IIMs in the same fashion as the old Indian Institutes of Technology mentored the new ones last year.
The government's logic was that if the new IIMs are started as separate entities, they will have to engage separate architects for designing the building and other structures. But if they are mentored by the existing IIMs, there will be better coordination when the campus is being designed thereby cutting costs and enabling better planning.
Besides, the existing faculty could take care of additional load in managing the new IIMs till the new institutes get their own faculty.
The IIM-Review Committee, headed by R C Bhargava, had also said that the old institutes should mentor the new ones.
The committee had said that the new IIMs should be under the control of the existing IIMs initially, which could help them learn from the experience of the old institutes in shaping their future. The recommendations are being considered by the government.
Creation of campus, facilities and faculty also came up for discussion at the meeting.
Meanwhile, some progress has been made in setting up of the IIMs in the states of Haryana and Tamil Nadu where the government has identified the buildings for operation of the B-schools.
The proposed IIM at Rohtak will temporarily function in a building constructed by the Haryana government for setting up a polytechnic.
Similarly, the proposed institute at Trichy will function at the building of the Bharathidhasan University there.