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The Indian Institute of Planning and Management, estabilished in 1973, is a non-profit, educational institute with a presence in 7 cities in India. Headquartered in New Delhi, since 1973, it has a campus in New Delhi and branches in Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad. The institute offers courses in Entrepreneurship and Management, leading to Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees awarded by IMI Europe. The current honorary dean is Prof.Arindam Chaudhuri, son of the founder Dr. M. K. Chaudhuri.

The institute is involved in a major controversy regarding the veracity of its claims in print advertisements.

Faculty

Regular Faculty

Prof. A Sandeep is Dean - India and Prof. Prasoon Majumdar is Dean - Academics. Most of the regular faculty of the institute are alumni of IIPM. Prof. Chaudhuri himself is a Gold Medalist from the institute. A Businessworld article investigating the institute's claims that the average age of the faculty is only 27 and that they have no verifiable research experience. A Jam magazine article confirms that students are satisfied with the regular faculty.

Global Outreach Program

IIPM organizes lectures by over 30 professors from the worlds top 15 b-schools such as Harvard, Columbia, Wharton, Stanford etc for its students. IIPM has also arranged exclusive seminars for their students by Leadership expert and author of 'The 7 Habits of Highly effective people' Stephen Covey, Marketing text author Dr. Philip Kotler, Economic Value Added (EVA) propounder Joel Stern, Sales expert Zig Ziglar and Success and Motivation specialist and author of Chicken Soup series Jack Canfield.

Publications

IIPM publishes four journals with articles by the faculty of IIPM. Articles from the faculty of b-schools like Harvard, Yale and Wharton are also republished: 1. India Economy Review (A quarterly overview of the Indian economy) 2. The Human Factor (A quarterly collection of articles and research from leading academics and practitioners of HR) 3. Need the dough? (A quarterly collection of articles and research from leading academics and practitioners of Finance) 4. Strategic Innovators (A quarterly collection of articles and research from leading academics and practitioners of Strategy)and two magazines: 1. Business & Economy 2. 4P's. (Cited from Insight Media)

Infrastructure

IIPM's claims that its infrastructure is cutting edge. Students, it claims, learn the very latest in management techniques using the very best in equipment and teaching. According to the institute, its infrastructure including classrooms, teaching aids, libraries, electronic libraries, IT equipment like Wi-fi and laptops, and leisure equipment like gymnasiums and swimming pools measure up to world class standards. - It has over 25000 books in the Delhi library, with access to several other libraries such as the British Council and American Library through sharing agreements. Its electronic libraries with access to leading databases like ProQuest (over 6000 journals archived for up to 90 years)and India Business Information Database (IBID - 25 years of news clippings and analysis sorted by industry and product) are available for all students to access online. All students are provided with laptops (IBM or HP) which are are always online with wi-fi networks in campus.

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Detractors complain of non-existent infrastructure and misrepresentation in promotional messages. Most of these criticisms relate to the infrastructure in centres other than its New Delhi campus.

A Jam Magazine investigation claimed that contrary to the impressions put out by IIPM's advertisements, the institute's Mumbai centre is only a four storey building (which IIPM refers to as "tower" in its advertisements) with a parking lot. It also claimed that IIPM was advertising its free laptops and Wi-Fi much before they actually started providing them to students. It also pointed out that the fees paid by students is very high by Indian standards and cover the price for the laptops many times over. A Businessworld article on the same issue pointed out the discrepancy between IIPM's use of the words "campus" and "branch". IIPM's advertisements never make it clear that many of the facilities advertised, like swimming pools and gymnasiums, are available only in its New Delhi campus and not in its other branches though students at all centres pay the same fees.

Position in Indian B-School Rankings

Business Today-ACNielsen ORG-Marg's 2004 listing of India's top 30 B-schools (Source: Business Today. Oct 10, 2004; pg 96) ranked IIPM Mumbai at 23rd and IIPM Delhi the 30th. The schools were ranked using ACNielsen's Winning Brands model. Respondents were asked to rank 30 shortlisted B-schools on eight parameters - reputation, success of placement, quality of placement, infrastructure, faculty, teaching methodology and specialisation and admission eligibility. Based on the scores on different parameters, the model calculates the Brand Equity Index (BEI) for each school.

The Outlook C-Fore B-School survey had ranked IIPM's Delhi campus in the top 10 among several parameters in 2003, but IIPM advertisements generalised these rankings for all IIPM campuses. After complaints made by IIPM students and alumni, C-Fore issued a clarification removing IIPM from its survey, stating that it had "received serious complaints about the veracity of information given by them". IIPM continued to advertise rankings even after C-Fore had removed it from its survey. However, Sandeepan Deb, Managing Editor of Outlook, stated in a Hindustan Times article that IIPM remained a part of the survey, and that the research agency CFORE could not remove IIPM from the survey. He also said that the magazine would take greater care to verify the data provided by B-Schools.

Outlook Magazine has twice published caution notices in 2005 informing students and all related parties about the withdrawal of the rankings. Outlook also stated that they have also "come across instances, where the institute doesn't disclose facts truly and correctly". IIPMStudent 9's blog claims there is a conspiracy behind these events at Outlook, and outlines a series of events that support this claim.

The Business Barons B-School Study 2004 (Source: BUSINESS BARONS. Jan 31, 2005; pg 65) has ranked the Indian Institute of Planning & Management (IIPM) 8th overall in India. Five parameters were used for the qualitative rankings - infrastructure, placement salaries commanded, depth of industry interface, quality of course contents and quality of students.

Advertising Strategy

IIPM is reputed to be one of the largest spenders on advertising in India. According to the Economic Times, the institute was the seventh highest print advertiser for the month of September 2005 spending Rs. 3 crore (30 million). It buys full-page print ads in, The Times of India, as well as the Hindustan Times, the Telegraph and the Hindu. It increases the frequency of advertising in the May to July period when universities begin admissions for their academic programs. In May 2005, the institute had an ad spend of Rs. 5 crore (Rs. 50 million), making it the largest advertiser in the print media for that month.

It usually runs full-page advertisements. These advertisements are notable for:

1. Large amounts of detailed text: IIPM advertisements typically include a large amount of text and many tables. Some advertisements also include an essay by Arindam Chaudhuri or Dr. Malay Chaudhuri, on economic or social topics. These essays have covered topics such as the existence of an 'MBA Mafia', corruption among politicians, and prescriptions for economic and social reform. See http://www.iipm.edu/itt.html.
2. Rankings: Mentions IIPM's rankings on various parameters of various B-school ranking surveys. In the fine print of its advertisements, it mentions that the institute believes that it is #1 in India in terms of course content, global linkages and industry interface but that this has not been acknowledged by official rankings because of the 'inferiority complex' and the 'intellectually dwarfed unquestioning attitudes' that the industry and media in India have developed towards the IIMs.

Bloggers have alleged that the mainstream media does not investigate the claims made by IIPM for fear of losing ad revenue.

Sister Concerns

Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM's honourary dean) founded Planman Consulting in 1996. Planman has an IT Services division which provides offshoring solutions, a film producing division which makes feature films in Bollywood, a publishing house which runs Business & Economy magazine, and a management consulting arm that is engaged by FORTUNE 500 companies. Outlook Magazine refers to the group as "a media, publishing and education behemoth"

Controversies

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In 2005, a youth magazine named JAM, edited by Rashmi Bansal (an IIMA alumna) who also runs a blog Youth Curry, did a story claiming to expose some of the claims made by IIPM. The article claimed that institute hasn't been accredited by any Indian accredition agency or University such as AICTE, UGC or under other state acts. The institute's degrees are conferred by an unknown agency called IMI Europe, which has been called a diploma mill organisation on the lines of the ITT Technical Institute model.

Gaurav Sabnis, a popular Indian blogger, and an alumnus, linked that article. Three months later, IIPM threatened to sue Sabnis for libel if the postings were not removed from his blog. Sabnis refused to remove his postings, and further stated that IIPM contacted his employer, IBM, and allegedly threatened to publicly burn the IBM Laptop Computers they had purchased from IBM unless the posts were removed. IBM is yet to confirm this threat. Sabnis stated that IBM did not pressure him to remove the blogpost, but he decided to quit his job as he did not want IBM to suffer bad publicity through his actions. This action generated spontaneous support for Sabnis from bloggers. On 11 October, 2005, IIPM became the highest ranked search term on Technorati. On October 11, 2005, Varna Sriraman, a blogger who had been posting on the ongoing controversy, claimed on her blog that IIPM emailed her and asked her to remove all the posts related to IIPM or face legal action. There is also some doubt about whether the legal notic

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