Someone is finally talking sense

I have a young cousin who wants to get into IIM. She believes that an MBA (or PGDM, to be precise) from any of the IIMs will set her up for multi$$$ moolah.

This is obviously not true. Who is to blame? Fair and square, I think our popular media is the culprit. They print grotesque, inaccurate and non-comparable salaries year after year after year on the front pages of newspapers. It has become a given, a vulgar and obscene race to bigger and bigger material scores - speak to a layperson, and they will ask "Beta, you are from IIM? Oh you must be earning crores". If one tries to talk sense to this person, and explain how things really are, the reaction most likely is "Hmmm. This dude was probably near the bottom of his class. The Economic Times / Times of India / Jhumri Talaiya Khabrein cannot be wrong"

Anyhow, I was mightily pleased to read the following article. I hope it encourages other institutes to speak up and let the truth be known:

IIM-A has denied a front-page report in The Economic Times which said a recruiter made a Rs 1.44 crore-plus salary offer at final placements currently on at the school.

“Sure, no one’s talking yet. But ET has learnt that Deutsche Bank, which had set the upper ceiling in 2008 by offering a Rs 1.44-crore package, has broken that record this year”, said the ET report.

In a blog link sent by student media co-ordinator Rohan Desai, the school said (Desai also urged that we put-up the link on our blog to reach a wider audience):

“We would like to clarify in interest of the entire community that this is incorrect. Also, converting dollar salaries to rupee terms does not portray the correct picture and hence we provide the average dollar salary separately in our press releases.

We felt compelled to communicate this clarification because we believe it has the potential of driving aspiring students into making misinformed decisions and also gives incorrect signals about the economy.

IIMA over the last few years has chosen not to disclose the highest salary offered as we believe salaries are just one component of the jobs offered and also because the highest salary is in no way representative of the recruitment scenario.”

While the purpose of this blog is not to run-down competition, and we have never done that,Mint understands why students, and teachers, wish to project b-schools as more than just places where students turn into crorepatis. While salary figures are indicative of the economy, we stick to the official version released at the end of the placement season.

Placements can be covered in other ways. This is one of the reasons why the writer of this blog was allowed to live on-campus during placement week in 2007 at a time when there was a media black-out.