INDIAN ASSOCIATION OF AUTONOMOUS BUSINESS SCHOOLS! 

IAABS had launched its 1st B-schools Summit  on October 9 and 10, 2015 at the XIME  campus auditorium in Bangalore Electronic City. The  speakers at the   summit  appealed to the  MHRD to treat the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) schools on par with   the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs)   and provide a level playing field  as some of these  were quite comparable to the best of the IIMs by way of brand equity and global connectivity. The galaxy of speakers  included Mr B Muthuraman, former Tata Steel chairman, Mr M B Athreya, leading management strategist, Prof T V Rao, considered as father of HRD, Dr Bakul Dholakia Director General of IMI and former Director of  IIM A, Prof Joe Philip, Founder of XIME, Dr Devi Singh, former Director IIM Lucknow among others.

The primary focus of the summit was that the government should unfetter the higher education system especially the management education and allow the market forces to take care of the  admissions, fees and investments in these. The current policy of annual renewal of admission quotas, restrictions on number of students admitted to the business schools, tight control over fee fixation were all counter-productive and would not help in developing  management talent for the coming years.  The IAABS wanted the government to roll back the AICTE order of December 28, 2010 which was retrograde.