IIM Kashipur registers 186% increase in female students’ enrollment

Kashipur: Overcoming the uncertainties and disruptions caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur successfully inaugurated its 10th batch of MBA and the first batch of its new program MBA (Analytics) on 31st July 2020 using virtual means to bring all the stakeholders together.

With the growing concern of gender diversity among higher education institutions and various experts across fields agreeing that gender diversity at workplaces leads to faster business growth and better financial and social outcomes, one simply cannot rule out the fact that the true measure of gender diversity lies in representation and inclusivity. The financial empowerment of women boosts the economic growth of the nation as a whole. Women managers tend to possess skills like empathy, effective communication, creativity which are extremely important in the corporate world.

IIM Kashipur is committed towards the goal of inclusiveness and maintained that the true measure of gender diversity depends not only on gender alone but also on the approach towards inclusivity and diversity.

Maintaining a steady growth, IIM Kashipur has inducted 285 students into the 10th batch of its flagship MBA program and 54 students into the 1st batch of the MBA Analytics program.

Representation of female students witnessed a whopping growth rate of 186% from the last batch. The new batch has a healthy representation of female students from 20 states/UTs of the country. The rise in gender and discipline diversity has come on the back of certain changes being done in the admission process without comprising on the merit of the candidates. To promote gender diversity, IIM Kashipur continued with its initiative of sanctioning 15 supernumerary seats for female students.

The current batch will be the most academically diverse till date, with 45% of batch coming from non-engineering disciplines such as humanities, science, commerce, management studies, architecture, hotel and tourism management, the class will be an academically diverse eclectic mix. With students from 24 states/UTs, the batches of both the programs will also be culturally diverse ones with representation from all corners of the country which will bring in rich cultural and geographical diversity to the campus. It is important to note that despite being situated in the hilly state of Uttarakhand, IIM Kashipur has attracted more than 23 percent of students from the southern parts of India.

The new cohort of students of MBA Analytics will surely be credited with many firsts, inducting 54 percent of female students, in its very first batch of 54 students, first time the majority of students being female in any batch of IIM Kashipur. Diversity can also be seen in terms of educational background in the MBA Analytics batch with 26% of students coming from various backgrounds such as commerce, architecture, science, etc.

Delivering the inaugural address for the batch, Prof. Kulbhushan Balooni, director, IIM Kashipur welcomed the students by emphasizing the innovations brought in the curriculum. “We have updated the program structure, content, plan for delivery to represent cutting edge industry trends. There is an experiential learning component to make MBA relevant for the real word problem solving, emphasizing on critical thinking.”