A few days back I had written about how the new IIMs with a sanctioned batch size of around 60 and a faculty strength of 20 are unviable and need to scale up quickly. My argument was that one of the big strengths of the older IIMs is its faculty size which leads to a large number of electives, which allows students to shape themselves the way they best feel. In this context it would be interesting to compare these IIMs to one or more of the older IIMs.
I recently received a mail by the IIMB Alumni Association asking me to reach out to batchmates who are not part of the association. This mail had been sent to all IIMB Alumni who are registered with the association, and the purpose was to increase membership and reach of the association (and no, there are no membership fees). And the mail came with a very interesting data set, and one of the fields was the size of each graduating batch at IIMB.
It can be seen that IIMB also started rather small, with about 50 students graduating in the first batch in 1976. By the end of the decade, the number was close to a 100, which is where it stayed through the 1980s. Around 1990 was when the batch size increased to about 150, and the number stayed within the 150-200 range for another decade and a half (the 2004 batch was bigger than the ones around it, possibly due to the IT slowdown in 2002 when this batch entered IIM).
And then after 2006 (when I graduated), the batch size increased. My batch had three sections as would have the 15 batches prior to that (based on this data; IIM sections normally consist of 60-70 students). In fact, the “quantum” nature of the increase in batch size at IIM can be put down to the concept of sections – so the increase from the 100 to 150 level was a function of addition of a third section, and so on. After 2006, though, the batch size has exploded, and the current batch (2013-15, who I’m teaching) has a strength of almost 400 students (divided into six sections).
A good addition to this dataset would be some data that could show the prominence or measure of success of IIMB Alumni who graduated in each batch, which can then allow us to examine whether batch size has had anything to do with continued career success of the students. It would be interesting to examine how this additional data can be collected.