At the 28th annual convocation of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode on April 4, the atmosphere was not just celebratory, but a statement of global intent. As 1,432 students across eight programmes received their degrees, the ceremony served as a manifestation of a trend recently solidified by the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026: the increasing importance of the IIM brand on the world stage.
In an era where Indian IITs and IIMs have broken into the global elite, IIM Kozhikode has achieved an acclaimed milestone, outranking the venerable Princeton University in the category of Business and Management Studies – IIM Kozhikode secured 78th rank, as compared to Princeton’s 81st. According to Debashis Chatterjee, director of IIM Kozhikode, this isn’t a fluke of data, but the result of global benchmarking. “Even though Princeton isn’t really known for business and management studies – it is more famous for sciences – but getting ahead of a 280-year-old Ivy League research university in a specific metric speaks a lot.”
The power of the brand
The widening gap between India’s technical institutes and its liberal arts centres remains a point of contention. In the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, while IITs and IIMs have broken into the global elite, with many in the top 100, our premier liberal arts and humanities centres – legacy players such as Delhi University and JNU, as well as new-age heavyweights such as Ashoka University – are ranked far lower. “The brand speaks much faster than the performer,” Chatterjee said. “Today, an IIM or an IIT brand is much stronger than most liberal arts universities in India. Brands perform better because they attract talent at the input end and move that talent to a higher orbit at the output end.”
Chatterjee argued that the secret to the IIM system’s success lies in knowing exactly where the goalposts are. “By benchmarking itself against the best in the world, IIM Kozhikode has successfully pivoted from a regional centre of excellence to a global heavyweight,” he said.
In fact, apart from IIM Kozhikode, five more Indian institutes have been ranked higher than Princeton – IIM Ahmedabad (21st), IIM Bangalore (29th), IIM Calcutta (47th), IIT Delhi (71st), and IIM Lucknow (75th).
Diversity by attraction, not design
Perhaps the most significant highlight of the 28th convocation was the graduating class’s profile. Of the three graduating cohorts in the Doctoral Programme in Management (DPM), PGP, and PGP-LSM, more than 50% were women. This shift represents a tectonic move in Indian management education.
In 2002, IIM Kozhikode’s flagship Postgraduate Programme in Management (PGPM) had just 5% female students – the lowest in the IIM system. By 2021, that number rose to 30%, and in the class of 2022, it hit 51%. “It happened neither by accident, nor by design,” Chatterjee said, clarifying that there are no reserved seats for women. “We just made the classroom and the MBA more attractive for female students. We didn’t do any magic; we just organised a few programmes and lectures to inspire women.” This ‘attraction over reservation’ model has since rippled through the entire IIM system, which has seen female participation rise from 10% to over 30% nationwide in the last decade.
A new benchmark for excellence
The convocation saw the awarding of 37 Doctoral (PhD) degrees alongside 1,395 MBA degrees across full-time and executive programmes. As these graduates head into a volatile global economy, they do so backed by an institution that is moving towards a triple-crown accreditation.
For the broader Indian education ecosystem, the message from Kozhikode is clear: excellence requires a benchmark. Whether it is competing with Oxford, Harvard, or Princeton, Chatterjee insisted that Indian institutes must define where they want to reach. “If you don’t know where the goal is,” he asked, “how will you improve?”