Strengthening Diversity In IIMA’s PGP And PGP - FABM Programmes

Professor Errol D’Souza, Director, IIMA said, “We are pleased to have more students joining IIMA who we envisage will become future leaders of organizations. Diversity in the student population helps in enriching the learning process. We consider surface-level diversity that has easily identifiable characteristics such as sex or educational backgrounds to be important.  The institute believes such diversity has an impact on the heterogeneity of the deep and enduring attributes such as values, attitudes, opinions, and perspectives of students which enhances their creativity and performance in an organizational context.”

Non-engineers constitute 33% of the students who have joined PGP Program this year, which is higher than last five years, even with the increase in batch size.

Professor Apratim Guha, Outgoing-Chairperson, Admissions, IIMA, explains “Our admissions policy helps us admit students with diverse perspectives to contribute greatly to the discussion-based learning that we employ at IIMA.  To have a broader mix of participants without compromising on quality will enrich the academic experience of IIMA students even further.”

Data for PGP Graduate Program: Non - Engineering students

The PGP Programme has also witnessed a steady growth over the last four years in the percentage of women students, with this year’s batch having 27% women which support last year’s growth.

Professor D’Souza added, “We are conscious about the efficacy of increasing the percentage of women entering our class. The achievements are slow as the goal is to not give extra credits or specify a quota for gender or other diversity attributes in the admissions process. In a discussion-based learning environment, such as ours, diversity of participants’ backgrounds and inclusivity at an institutional level contribute significantly to a positive learning environment.”

Data for PGP Graduate Program: Female students

PGP-FABM programme, the world’s top-rated programme in agri-business, also had a diverse entering class of forty-six students. This year saw more than a double percentage of applicants from diverse backgrounds joining PGP-FABM with thirty-nine percent of the entering class are from food technology field and 35% are from the field of agriculture.

Data for PGP- FABM Graduate Program: Food Technology Background

Data for PGP – FABM Graduate Program: Agriculture Background