What the IIM Act of 2017 actually changed — and why it matters to you
For decades India’s most selective management institutes awarded a diploma, not a degree. That single fact should end the argument about which is better.
Until the Indian Institutes of Management Act came into force, the IIMs did not award MBAs. They awarded a Post Graduate Diploma in Management. They were not universities, so they could not award degrees.
Nobody thought less of an IIM PGDM for it. The instrument was a diploma; the institution was the point.
A diploma is not automatically the lesser thing. India’s most competitive management programmes were diplomas for decades.
What it means when you are choosing
It means the degree-versus-diploma question is not about quality. It is about which instrument your next step requires.
- A rulebook naming a degree — take the degree.
- Private hiring on capability — the institute matters more than the award type.
- A PhD or government recruitment — take the degree, and avoid the equivalence argument entirely.
Where the diploma still costs you
AIU equivalence. A PGDM can be treated as equivalent to a degree, but equivalence is granted to specific programmes and it is a document you have to produce. That is an argument you do not want to be having at a verification desk with a queue behind you.
More in History
Money
The ₹2 lakh online MBA is selling you the same degree as the ₹38,000 one
Below a certain price the differences are real. Above it, you are buying teaching and a cohort — not recognition. Almost nobody says which one they are selling you.
Recognition“UGC approved” is the most misleading phrase in Indian education marketing
It is not technically false. It is just answering a different question from the one you asked.
ProductsThe mini MBA is not an MBA, and everyone selling one knows it
A twelve-week course borrowing the name of a two-year degree. Sometimes genuinely useful. Never the thing its name implies.