IIMA makes final placements 2012 data public as per the IPRS

Ahmedabad, 6 September 2012

The Indian Institute of Management(IIM) Ahmedabad has released the reports of final placements 2012 for PGP, PGP-ABM and PGPX programs, prepared as per the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS).

The IPRS is IIMA’s initiative to realize its vision of authentic and transparent placement reporting in B-schools. The IPRS was born as an initiative to increase the authenticity of placement reports by insisting on audited and hence credible data.

This is the second year that IIM-­A has provided audited reports since adopting the IPRS on June 18, 2011. Just like last year, the reports have been audited by independent auditor CRISIL. The reports for all three programmes (PGP, PGP-­ABM and PGPX) have been made available on the IPRS website (http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/iprs/download.php).

For the second year in a row, CRISIL has made placement process stronger by insisting on auditable proof for every data point during their audit process. There were two rounds of audit this year -­ the first in March 2012 and the other after the new academic session began.

Mr. Sachin Nigam, Senior Director of SME Ratings at CRISIL said, “IPRS is still evolving and auditable proof for each data point ensures that there is greater standardization and comparability of placement data as per the IPRS requirements. This year at IIM-­A, we have witnessed a higher level of participation by recruiters, which is evident from the increased level of audited data points across all three programs – PGP, PGPX and PGP-­ABM. This enhanced participation augurs well for taking the IPRS initiative to the next level.”

The second year of IPRS has seen success in terms of the number of offers for which data has been made available. For the PGP programme, salary data as per the IPRS was available for 276 out of 365 offers (76%), an increase from last year’s 204 out of 304 offers (67%). The increase was even more significant for the PGPX programme, with data available for 69 out of 72 offers (96%) as opposed to last year’s 30 out of 60 offers (50%). We are happy to report that the PGP-­ABM programme has achieved 100% data reporting (37 of 37 offers) as opposed to last year’s 27 of 34 offers (79%). These trends point to a growing acceptability of the IPRS among recruiters.

Professor Saral Mukherjee, member of the Placement Committee at IIM Ahmedabad said, “One of the main barriers to the adoption of the IPRS has been the fear among B-­Schools that recruiters would not cooperate in sharing auditable data. The significant increase in auditable data points this year shows that this is perhaps an unfounded fear. While we are yet to achieve full compliance from all recruiters, we are happy that so many recruiters have cooperated with us. It is now up to the B-­Schools to reciprocate the trust and adopt reporting standards like the IPRS which offer transparency in reporting aggregate statistics, while maintaining confidentiality of individual student and recruiter data at the same time.”

IIMA has planned a conference on 29th of September 2012 to review the IPRS, discuss challenges faced during adoption, share learnings and discuss possible modifications to the IPRS.