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To answer this question, we first need to define a tier-3 B-School. In my opinion, the rule of thumb would be that any MBA college which refuses itself to be scrutinized based on data on its quality of teaching and learning outcomes is a tier-3 MBA college. I would set the following four parameters for defining a tier-3 B-School. Any MBA college or B-School that is
i) Not NBA accredited
ii) Not having any international accreditations
iii) Doesn’t participate in NIRF rankings nor figures in those rankings.
iv) Doesn’t participate in credible rankings such as done by Careers360 which rank only based on data and information and have set up a transparent process.
If we are to go by this, of the 3500+ MBA Colleges or B-Schools that we have in India, not more than 600 should be in your consideration set.
i) we have about 401 MBA colleges that are accredited by the NBA.
ii) About 630 MBA colleges participating in NIRF (https://www.nirfindia.org/Home) rankings
iii) About 450 colleges participating in Careers360 ranking
iv) The international accredited institutions would be a handful. For example, there are only 14 AACSB accredited institutions in India.
The quality of Management Education follows the waterfall graph. We have some very fine B-Schools at the top led by the IIMs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Management) , MDI, IIFT, DoMS etc. These would be about 50 to 75 in number. This is followed by those PGDM or MBA offering colleges that have been in management education and have made a name for themselves over the years in the learning outcomes and manage to have a strong industry connect that they design the curriculum well and place the students also. This outcome ensures that students from around the country come to study here. These are right fit for the 60 percentile to 80 percentile students. These would be another 100 B-Schools. After this, we see a steep fall in the quality and the tier-2 B-Schools come up. These MBA colleges largely cater to the local needs and are aspired for by locality. Geographic diversity is almost non-existent in such B-Schools.
Given an option, I will choose to do MBA only if I get into the first two clusters which total about 15-200. However, we have to provide for all kinds of students who may not have the right scores and desire that they get a job through the campus placement process in a local B-School.
However, it doesn’t make any sense to study beyond the tier-2 colleges unless it is just to kill time and acquire a formal qualification.
The short answer to your question: I will never invest time and money to study in a tier-3 B-School or tier-3 MBA college.
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