Off Topic- IIPM Ads Being probed by MRTPC

Remember IIPM?

Well MRTPC is probabing IIPM's ad claims according to the Business Standard. Good to see this happening.

Seeking to give relief to lakhs of aspiring business managers, the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) has initiated a probe into enticing claims made by Arindam Chaudhuri-controlled Indian Institute of Planning and Management ((IIPM).

Taking suo-moto cognisance of IIPM ad campaigns that promise free laptops and tours abroad for its students, MRTPC last week directed its investigative arm DGIR to look into the promises made by the institute.

This is not about Travel but it Deserves to be on my Most Read Blog

I found an excellent site on IIPM via Desipundit. Have a look at some real stuff about IIPM, what they don't tell you in their ads.

And here is a similar site about Amity Business School and Amity University.

Why am I so vehment about fraud institutions and the rankings given to them by mainstream media? Because I had the misfortune to teach at one such place. I am giving a small quote from my previous post dealing with my teaching experiences. Do have a look.

I walk into the examination hall and the students pay no attention. They keep on shouting on top of their voices. I somehow manage to get heard, and ask for order. They reluctantly lower their voices. I ask them to remove all the reading materials so that I can give them the question and answer sheets. This is a closed book mid semester exam. They remove a few things. Whatever they do not, I throw it in a heap. Five minutes into the exam, I find book pages and other notes with a student and I have to almost physically fight to take it away. The student taunts “Ma’am you know nothing is going to happen to us. What is the point?” Inwardly, I wonder, what the point is but with a brave face I tell him (or on many other occasions it was her) “You cannot do it if I am standing in the class. It does not matter to me, whatever is going to happen later.”

How Exam Copies are (not) Evaluated Sometimes

Through google blogsearch I came to this post from Abyi and he seems to be mystified. Let me share it with you.

"The exams started with a bang just after 3 months, little time for us to prepare. Exams were cool, but one thing went wrong & I m glad it did. I was appearing for my QT paper, which was followed by another important paper in afternoon on the same day. My roll no in class was 02. I was sitting very near to the platform where the papers were submitted. I managed to finish my paper before time, & when I wanted to submit my paper I called the Instructor to collect the paper. He asked me to leave it at the desk near the platform. I was thinking about by next paper & so by mistake I put my answer sheet in my bag & put the question paper on the Platform, a mistake that could get me into trouble.

Later in the evening when I reached home & opened my bag I found the answer sheet in my bag, I was stunned for a minute. I just thought the worst could be that I fail in the particular paper & I could repeat it whenever next. I did not communicate this mistake to my college authorities thinking that I would be punished for my act. The fear kept my mouth shut."

Take a guess what would have happened to this student? Well, if can guess correctly, you like me know the secret. Abyi goes on to tell us:

"When the results came out later after three months, I scored 63 marks in the paper I Did NOT SUBMIT."

Now let me tell you how this could have happened because I have seen something similar in my jobs from hell.

I invigilated in an exam at one place and took the copies with me. My room was next to this person who had to grade the copies. So, he casually dropped in and asked if all the students were present. I said yes. And that was the end of the matter. Those copies remained with me forever. In fact, I had them with me for a very long time after I left that job. But the last time we moved I threw them out, now I wish I had not. And the marks were given. How? I guess the teacher gave it on the basis of the impression of the students he had.

So my guess is Abyi's case, the teacher just looked at the attendance sheet, where Abyi must have signed. Then he never bothered to open the copies and gave random marks on the basis of his/her impression. See, such an easy way to get over with grading.

Why I feel IIPM Case has a Major Difference or Two from the Sony Case

It seems Sony has invited the ire of bloggers these days. I became aware of it from Desipundit and then of course one has to just follow a few more links. What Sony did? Well, there a few of their CDs came with something of a spyware (and don’t ask me what they are, beyond that they are not good for your computer) and their consumers (and others) didn’t like it. They blogged about it and later the company withdrew the product. The story can be followed from Information Week. And there are already three court cases against Sony for this incident!

Now let me take you back to the IIPM story. Well, one minor difference is that a print magazine broke the story (as Srijith said on Desipundit) but the drama was enacted in the blogshpere. But to me, there are two more substantial differences.

One, there is no court case against IIPM and two, they are still coming out with full page ads instead of taking their product back. Regarding the court case, at some point in life (and I am not going to tell you when) I started looking at how to file a PIL (public interest litigation) in India. The little that I could find till date I covered at this site and I found this

http://www.corecentre.org/faq011

“Q.4. Against whom a PIL can be Filed?

A PIL can be filed against a State/ Central Govt., Municipal Authorities, and not any private party. However, “Private party” can be included in the PIL as “Respondent”, after making concerned state authority, a party. For example- if there is a Private factory in Delhi, which is causing pollution, then people living nearly, or any other person can file a PIL against the Government of Delhi, Pollution Control Board, and against the private factory. However, a PIL cannot be filed against the Private party alone.”

The way things are going in this country I wish they could include the knowledge on how to file a PIL in the school curriculum in India.

Anyway, as I was saying there are no court cases filed in IIPM vs. Bloggers case whereas there are three filed already in Sony vs. Bloggers. I know the legal system works very differently here but still.

Coming to the second difference, Sony took the product back and IIPM is coming out with full page ads, and you know what I feel? I feel that there should be statutory warning with educational institution’s ads, like the cigarette ads. They should be forced to say in clear visible way ‘This is an Advertisement Only, Students are advised to Verify the Claims before taking Admissions.’

I will just quickly point out two things in the new IIPM ads. One is repeated reference to something called ‘Business Barons’ for their rankings (Business Today and Indian Today ranking that they claim is for 2004 and not 2005). Search for Business Baron on google without IIPM (and if you do ‘business baron IIPM’ search, well you get blogs as top links) and the links take you, as usual, NOWHERE. Not even google cache has anything on this. Now the site might be down, but then let us see, if it comes up I will update these words.

Second, IIPM has started giving dates of the people who visited their campus from abroad. Quoting from their ad”

“The following shortlist of International faculty members visiting IIPM to take classes (emphasis mine), will also be taking MDPs and training programs for India Inc. as per mentioned dates.*”

One name is of Professor Jane Collier from University of Cambridge and she talks on Corporate Social Responsibility on 17^th , 20^th, 22^nd and 24^th October 2005 in various IIPM campuses. Yes, she came and took MDPs and training programs but she never took classes.

Here is a conversation that I had with her on email:

“Thank you for telling me all this. I do know that their degree courses are not validated, which means that their quality is not assured. They are quite open about the fact that they beleive they can teach what they like. Unfortunately in a non-regulated environment institutes can do what they like. Discerning parents and students should not patronise them, but maqny do because they see that their gradutes gain employment. I have spoken to them about these matters, and they know what I think. HOwever, so long as they do not actually do anything illegal there is little that can be done. When I get back to England I will follow up the blog references you have given me. I am giving seminars to people who are in business and therefore
not students of the institute. Jane Collier.

Jane Collier
Judge Business School
Trumpington St
Cambridge CB2 1AG”

Well, you can see that the professor wrote in hurry but she is clear that she is not teaching the students. And this conversation took place while she was in India.

Well, you now know why I say that there should be statutory warning with educational institution’s ads, like the cigarette ads.

IIPM and Hochschule Fur Oekonomie

On October 29th I was sitting on Bangalore Rajdhani and the blessed people gave us a copy of Indian Express. H (codenaming my husband for the first time on my blog and H stands for husband!) and I started to read different sections and then he gleefully pointed out to me an advertisement by IIPM! He knew that would keep me silent for a very long time.

Well the heading of the advertisement is “Misleading Journalism V/S Truth” and Kautiliya has scanned it on his blog (though the written text reproducing the ad has many typos)

Quoting from the Ad:

“It was mentioned in the article that ~Bloggers have alsp dug out a scanned page of an affidavit submitted by Malay Chaudhuri, flPM founder ... as a Lok Sabha candidate from Balasore in Orissa in 2004 claiming he did his M.Sc .. Ph.D. and D.Sc. from Berlin School of Economics from 1962 to 1970. They found that the institute was founded in 1971.”

And then the reply they gave to this in the ad:

“IIPM wishes to clarify that Dr. M. K. Chaudhuri, the Director of IIPM obtained his M.Sc., Ph.D. and D.Sc. certifications from Hochschule Fur Oekonomie, Berlin, (Karlshorst, East Berlin) between the years 1958and 1970 - as was mentioned in Dr. M. K. Chaudhuri's application to the Election Commission. Translated into English. Hochschule Fur Oekonomie, Berlin used to be referred to as Berlin School of Economics. The same name was mentioned in the application form since it was to be fined in English and not German. The copies of the original certificates stating the same were also submitted, where the name Hochschule Fur Oekonomie, Berlin is clearly mentioned. (which obviously have not been put on the net by the Election Commission).”

So, now we at least know that it is not the Berlin School of Economics that the particular blogger mentioned in her ‘personal tabloid’ (as the ad says)! Guys I know no German or about “Hochschule Fur Oekonomie” being translated as Berlin School of Economics, but when I did a Google search (matching exact phrase) on it, I got three links.

http://www.kautiliya.com/2005/10/iipm_where_is_the_advt_we_all_have_been_waiting_for.html

http://www.listserv.dfn.de/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0006b&L=indonews&O=D&F=&S=&P=296

http://www.unwe.acad.bg/staff/cv/mayalambovska.doc?PHPSESSID=5d08acf69c9ff42abe0898412e4fcf5f

Any idea where this place is located?

I blogged late about this due to two reasons. One, thinking others will do it and two before I went to Kautiliya’s site typing all that seemed like a daunting thought, now that the session is coming to an end and I have to do tons of corrections!

PS. Type the ad’s heading Misleading Journalism VS Truth and IIPM in google and have some fun (guess which is the first site?).

Question and Answers: The IIPM Issue

Guys, I have seen a lot of comments from so called IIPM people. I bring to you some of them in one place (not the outright abusive ones). A few of you have suffered them in my name (Andy, went on copying and pasting them at many places) and here it goes.

dear mridula, your question is logical and i hope i can give an answer to it; though it might not be the official one. here goes.
your question is, why does iipm advertise full page ads and iims do not. there could be two straightforward reasons to the same as i see them. one is that iipm has seven branches across india compared to other institutes that have only one branch and need to advertise only once.

Well, I said it before; IIMs issue admission notices and not ‘Dare to think beyond IIPMs’ kind of stuff.

since i have been here, i have had almost around 15 ivy league professors who have come to iipm campuses and have taken seminars at iipm.

Are you sure they were seminars? Your ad says they teach courses, which is not one and the same thing.

to quote the case of iit kanpur, you can ask any of the professors of iit kanpur how they jumped up at journalists when their center for enterprise technology (cet), …

Give me a link.

“your first query: "Andrew, the majority of claims made by IIPM adverts come from one source Business Baron. Why?"

if i were to request you to calculate the percentage of space devoted in a typical iipm advertisement to the business barons source (and to the business today source too please), you would realise that the percentage space is less than 1.3% (you won't believe it, i actually calculated it). if you were to say that 1.3% space devoted to a ranking given by business barons is "majority of claims", i should (again "should", kill me) say that your query is misrepresented”

The question was not about advertising space but the number of sources given for the rankings. So how many magazines do you quote apart from Business Baron?

ask any iipm student in delhi and bangalore who andy is and they'll tell you. anyway, your post seems very genuine. you could join iipm if you wish to.

You are a student right? And you realize I am a faculty member somewhere else. Can you please explain the above statement?

All this can be seen in great detail at
http://patrix.typepad.com/nerves/2005/10/prove_it_to_me_.html

"At 2:50 PM, bj said...
Oooh Rashmi. Is it true? Just do a go google on Rashmi Bansal IIM A and you get allegations of fudged graduation certificates and tribade inclinations (Not that I am personally against lesbianism)Is it true? Should I start a blog title "Rashmi Astounds" Would make you feel good?

At 8:51 PM, Mridula said...
BJ, give us the link."

http://youthcurry.blogspot.com/2005/06/amity-astounds.html

BJ you said Google, right? Give us a link or …

IIPM Planning and Research
have been assisting the faculty at IIPM in our journals (4P's - now a succesful magazine in Marketing - India's largest), our HR and FInance journals as well for almost six months now. I will pass out of IIPM this year, and will not stand for this mud slinging in the name of journalism.

Give us a source, which says so about 4P’s.

And you will not stand mudslinging but you will indulge in it, right? This is what you yourself say earlier

"In fact, maybe Outlook editor has a cut from revenue from website? Palety also publishes a book each year called India's best b-schools, with ex-Outlook editor... Telling, eh?"
http://youthcurry.blogspot.com/2005/10/caution-notice-re-iipm-in-outlook.html#comments

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