“When men asked her to dine,
Gave her cocktails and wine,
She knew what it meant - but she went! ”

I am at a reputed B-School in South India. The campus is huge and buzzing. I go through a presentation of Careers360 with the Dean religiously and lay out everything we think we have achieved in less than a year.
And then…

Dean: We value credibility. That is why we support your magazine. Your story about B-School rankings being ‘yummy crap’ was very correct.
I accept the compliment in all humility.

Dean: Each year, many media organisations come to us and tell us something we know: that we deserve a better ranking than what we get. To help the credibility of such media organisations, we decline to participate in their rankings or give them any ad support (chuckles).

We know Careers360 is different. We know that you will bring out the true picture of Indian B-Schools. Best of luck.

For the next 15-20 minutes, the interaction centres on the integrity of B-School rankings, the motives, the motivations, the machinations, etc. Meanwhile, the school’s marketing manager is given some instructions in the local language. As we discuss our methodology, Mr Dean scribbles on a piece of paper and hands it over to me.
It reads: “What is the Deal?”

Scene 2: One of our ad sales managers visits a private B-School, whose Director is an Ivy League-educated, patriotic-and-hence-returned-to-India professional. After the presentation, the young Director point-blank demands some “editorial coverage” in return for a paid advertisement.

When told about the wall between editorial and advertising in our magazine, he retorts: “What is the BIG Deal?”

I must confess that the behaviour of the Dean and the phoren-returned Director doesn’t surprise me on the way they went about brazenly articulating it.

Because, they have been used to it.

Because, that is the industry norm.

When we decided to do our own B-School ranking, we knew what we were up against: a set of public funded institutions which have taken their legacy for granted, a motley crowd of corrupt and unaccountable institutes which spoil the good work done by many others, irresponsible rating agencies and mercenary publications making hay while the education sun shines - and a few, rare exceptions caught between the devil and the deep sea, trying desperately to retain their integrity and sanity.

Love them or loathe them, what is it about Business School rankings that has colleges, pollsters and media houses falling over each other to conduct them, participate in them, publish them? Rather, “What is the Deal?” 

The answer, in my considered opinion, is “Business”.

For the institutes, it is about milking the brand image ensuing out of the ranking. For the pollster, it is about getting more work (and exploiting subsidiary “opportunities”). For the publications, it is about improving their fortunes and adding to the bottomline. It’s a win-win situation for everybody, and at its core is business, with a capital B. Which is why, in the last five years, the number of B-School rankings has grown over 300 per cent: from 4 to 13.

So, why the 14th ranking from Careers360?

The short answer is, our B-School ranking is about  students, that too with a capital S.

The raison d’etre of Careers360 is to help move education from the margins of journalism to the mainstream; from the supplements to the main pages, to take something that seriously impacts our nation, well, seriously. To that extent, our rankings mark a paradigm shift from the way they have been done all this while in our country.

We looked at where (and how) the existing rankings go wrong or are completely suspect, and decided to undo some of the damage. We formed a core team, consisting of people who understand education better than any other resource mainstream media has been willing to allocate. We decided to go and check out the claims ourselves. And we began with a firm conviction: that we should own up our results and accept the mistakes, if any, instead of palming it off on an agency with all its known failings and fallacies.

These B-School ranking are for you, dear reader/ student/ parent. They are not the last word, but it is an attempt in that direction.

“Let wealth and commerce,
laws and learning die
But leave us still our old nobility”

And the only “deal” here is the future of India, Mr. Dean.

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