The classrooms at the School of Management and Labour Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai will have a different look to them this year. According to information provided by Bino Paul, professor and chairperson, Centre for Human Resources Management and Labour Relations, the proportion of both non-engineers and women in the batch for the MA in Human Resource Management and Labour Relations program has risen close to 45% each this year. The corresponding figures last year for both the groups were 25% and 20% respectively. The institute attributes this diversity to changes in the admission process this year.
The big change which happened this year was that TISS scrapped its two-exam format and moved to a common TISS National Entrance Test (TISS NET). Earlier, the candidates applying to different programs had to take one common test and an additional test depending on the program they applied to. This year, however, all TISS aspirants, irrespective of the course they were interested in, had to only take the TISS NET. Notably, as affirmed by Mr Paul, there was no significant difference in the structure of the common paper last year as opposed to the TISS NET this year.
Mr Srivastava D K, dean of the management department said, “Diversity has always been a concern for us. Our idea behind bringing in the change was to broaden the reach of the b-school. Until last year, students from non-engineering backgrounds would often score well in the first exam while they failed to perform well in the second exam which tested areas such as quantitative aptitude. This happened because these were not the aspirants which were preparing for exams such as Common Admission Test (CAT), Xavier’s Aptitude Test (XAT) etc. The engineers and candidates preparing for these exams managed to do very well in the second exam and would often get selected. Since this year there was only one common exam with a higher stress on social awareness, a more diversified lot got through. Also, more women have come in from humanities background, perhaps that is the reason for a higher representation of women this year as well.”
TISS also re-introduced the essay component in the selection procedure and scrapped the group discussions this year. “We had a very diversified batch many years ago when writing essays formed a part of the selection process. Over the years, however, the proportion of engineers had risen a lot more in the institute. The re-introduction of essay has to an extent resulted in the current change this year,” informed Mr Paul.
The essay (or the pre-interview test) component was allotted 50 marks out of a total of 225 marks this year in which 100 marks were allotted to TISS NET and another 75 marks to the interview. After the initial screening was done on the basis of scores obtained in TISS NET, the marks gained in the essay were an important component of selection.
Mr Srivastava was also very clear that unlike the IIMs, the essay was not a test of the candidate’s English language skills. “While some weightage is given to the writing style, it is the substance part that counts more,” he said.
Essays were a part of the evaluation procedure many years ago at TISS. The institute had decided to do away with essays because of administrative inconveniences since at the time all the aspirants used to come to the institute to take the essay and this led to inefficiencies in the system.
When asked whether the scrapping of the second exam would take away the core applicants of TISS away from the institute, Mr Paul stated, “We are not a b-school. We want things to be liberal and flexible. Our course structure is also designed in such a way that more credits are allotted to subjects dealing with social sciences and labour relations and not the functional areas of business. This change is also not sudden. We have been thinking about it for close to three years now. We wanted to move beyond the narrow confines of management. Also, we are want more reflection and critical skills among our students owing to a greater stress on research methodology this year. Also, since I teach higher order quantitative skills, I have not seen too much of a difference in the assimilation skills of students from the humanities background and the average engineers.”
However, unlike many Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) which give additional marks to the diversity factor, Mr Paul asserted that at any stage it did not favour the non-engineers and women candidates. He added, “We follow a double blind review system. The evaluators do not know who has written the essay. So, there was no question of favouring any candidate in the name of diversity.”
B-schools in India have given mixed signals to essays this year. While institutes like Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai adopted on-spot essays, others such as Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development (SCMHRD), Pune abolished essays. The consequent effect was not replicated at Great Lakes though. In its PGPM course, the institute has seen a decrease in the proportion of female candidates from last year (33% to 24%) whereas the proportion of engineers has increased by 6 percentage points (88% to 94%).