The 5-acre London Business School churns out about a 1000 graduates a year and is ranked among the top MBA programmes in the world. Unlike this, the IIMs are doing a pitiable job while occupying considerably more than 100 acres of land on average. This is the gist of a once-recent article by Nirmalya Kumar in the Economic Times. Needless to say, it is easy to take issue with the arguments laid out in the article.

From the way Kumar puts forth his thesis, it appears that the IIMs are sitting pretty on a pile of scarce resources (much the way the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala discovered itself to be doing, though the hue and cry seems to have eased with time). The direct conclusion here is that acre for acre, the IIMs could easily carry out better capacity utilisation, to use management lingo. But is this really possible? Or desirable?

For one, an institution is not defined by the spread of the campus or the number of buildings. Instead, institutions are about the ecosystems they create in order to enable learning, research and other objectives. This might sound hollow to cynics, but having spent two activity-packed years at one such institution, I can vouch for the fact that the residential system makes a significant impact on the campus experience. Indeed, the “dorm culture” and “bonding” between the 30-odd residents of a dormitory are inextricable from the campus memories of those who call IIMA their alma mater.

Compare this to the setup at LBS – no residences, not even a self-contained campus, and buildings spread out in a part of the city. In fact, according to the student at LBS who described this to me, some of the main features of the campus (if a disparate set of buildings could be called that) are the classrooms, discussion rooms for the indispensable group work, and the library.

I couldn’t help wondering what my life at IIMA would have been without the badminton courts! Perhaps students at LBS live in off-campus residences where the amenities are far better than what could have been offered by the campus if it had attempted to. Moreover, it would be fair to assume that commuting, especially during late hours, is easily done in a city like London. Unlike this, the transaction costs of commuting, in terms of lost time, pollution, stress and so on, are significant deterrents in most places in India, leading to a less wholesome MBA experience for non-resident students.

That brings me to my next point, a tad more controversial perhaps, in favour of residential campuses. Although the formalized atmosphere of meeting rooms and libraries is conducive to intellectual discussion, there is something to be said for the less formal, more relaxed discussions that happen in dorm rooms or other campus hangouts such as the students’ mess and the night-canteen. But then again, an institute that caters to students with significant work experience might prefer to provide them a life that is closer to work life rather than campus life. This side of the argument gains credibility from the fact that IIMA’s one-year MBA program for executives, which accepts candidates with substantial work experience, is conducted at a more formalized level compared to its flagship two-year program.

For more views on this topic, check out this post by Prof. T.T. Ram Mohan of IIMA on his blog.

Ultimately, there are merits to both models, specific to their individual circumstances. Comparing the IIMs with European b-schools and exhorting them to squeeze more out of the land they stand on not only is unfair but also, to some extent, fails to take into consideration the rationale for establishing a self-contained campus in the first place. In spite of the “sprawling” campuses (as Kumar puts it, although the term itself is questionable), the IIMs have had to work hard to ensure that students did not suffer due to inadequate infrastructure when the intake was increased significantly as a result of the implementation of quotas for OBCs. Having mentioned the one topic that is synonymous with endless debate, non-existent rational discussion, and ever-postponed bold action, let me end this post right here!