Elite In Name Only: How India's Baby IIMs And NLUs Are Failing Their Students

The clock reads 3:20 AM when the email arrives. A student at an Indian Institute of Management hunches over his laptop in a hostel room thick with paint fumes, waterlogged floors glistening under flickering lights, mosquitoes droning in the stagnant air. The recruitment form has a 9 AM deadline. Six hours to decide his future, in a room that reeks of institutional failure.

Across the country, at a National Law University, another student prepares for final exams during yet another power cut, the third this week. The backup study space is a residential apartment 50 feet from railway tracks, where the institution houses lower-year students because the campus lacks infrastructure to accommodate its own enrolment. The fee for this experience is over ₹20 lakhs for a five-year degree.

These are not tier-three colleges in forgotten districts. These are IIMs and NLUs, India’s supposedly elite institutions, where the brightest minds compete through brutal entrance exams for golden tickets to professional success.

Yet beneath the veneer of three-letter acronyms lies a reality that would horrify the thousands of aspirants of these premier educations.

When Premier Means Makeshift

The story of IIM Ranchi’s temporary campus reads like administrative fiction, except students lived it. After COVID-19 delays, IPM batch students found themselves shuffled into the National Games Village, Khelgaon Housing Society, for their IIM experience. Classes ran from temporary locations such as Suchna Bhawan and a satellite campus that existed more in PowerPoint presentations than reality.

Students were able to move to the permanent campus in 2023 at Kanke, Ranchi.

"The campus is still developing, there is no proper sports facilities. No air conditioning in hostels, despite the hot weather," recounts one student who dropped out of IIM Ranchi’s IPM programme a year ago. "The single sharing rooms that are given to PGP students have been converted into twin sharing rooms with bunk beds (IPM 24-29). Facilities are zero compared to the fees."

The fees, incidentally, exceed ₹20 lakhs for the full programme.

In 2019, over 140 new students at IIM Amritsar were forced to stay in hotels after the institute failed to arrange hostel accommodation. By 2024, students were sleeping in the mess area as temperatures in Amritsar soared above 45 degrees Celsius. Their protest, captured on social media, showed the desperate reality behind the glossy brochures: students camping out in dining halls because their institute could not provide basic habitability.

One student had this to say about IIM Sambalpur: "Despite the campus being barely few years old, the infrastructure is already crumbling. Hostel rooms have mouldy, fungus-infested walls and shared washrooms that are barely cleaned. The water supply is horrendous. The institute pulls water from an extremely smelly in-house pond, filters it, and douses it with chlorine. This water causes severe hair fall and skin damage for almost everyone on campus. Forget comfort, basic hygiene and health standards are blatantly ignored."

Across the institutional divide, NLU students face identical nightmares. "The fee, which is absolutely insane," states a student from NLU Prayagraj. "We are paying over ₹20 lakhs for a BA LLB degree, and guess what. We do not even have our own campus. We are living in an engineering college’s leftover space. The infrastructure is mid at best, the facilities are average. For this kind of money, you would expect at least the basics."

At NLU Mumbai, students endure their own climate crisis. "The air conditioning would hardly work during summers, and Mumbai heat and humidity makes sure you sweat all day," explains a student. "The administration does not take cognisance of any complaint till somebody complains a dozen times."

The construction-site aesthetic persists across both IIMs and NLUs. Students get shifted for hostel renovations, only to return to unfinished work. The paint fumes linger for weeks. The waterlogging becomes chronic. The mosquito infestations turn hostel rooms into disease vectors.

MNLU Nagpur operates a particularly cruel accommodation system: "The uni does not have infra to accommodate all the students, so the lower years, 1st and 2nd, are kept outside the campus in residential style apartments that are extremely subpar and lack basic amenities," recounts a student. "I can recount so many instances where I was studying for the finals all night and had to suffer through a power cut for 3 plus hours. Not to mention the constant noise from the train tracks literally 50 ft away. It is not a good situation to be in."

In 2019, students at the National Law University in Odisha launched an indefinite protest demanding simple necessities: a girls’ hostel with proper amenities, the world-class library promised during admissions, and removal of problematic wardens. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once described NLUs as islands of excellence. Today, those islands are sinking under the same infrastructure failures plaguing newer IIMs.

The Money That Disappears and the Money That Never Arrives

Here is what makes the infrastructure failures at IIMs particularly galling: money is not the problem.

Take the most recent IIM to be established, IIM Guwahati. The Lok Sabha passed the bill in 2025, establishing IIM Guwahati as an institute of national importance with a ₹555 crore corpus fund for five years. Back in 2008-09, the government allocated ₹333 crores to each of the six new IIMs, Rohtak, Tiruchirappalli, Raipur, Kashipur, Udaipur and Ranchi, to build permanent campuses. Construction started only in 2014. By 2018, the government approved over ₹3,775 crores for permanent campuses of seven new IIMs, with a completion deadline of June 2021.

The deadline came and went. The money flowed. The problems persisted.

"Now you must realise how a private college can compete with an IIM for which govt allocates ₹550 crores," observes one industry watcher that goes by the name MBA Social on Instagram. "The only way... choose better locations like SPJIMR or MDI Gurgaon. Or leverage your industry or corporate network like XLRI or BITSoM. Or just dream big and involve govt with you and execute like ISB."

More than 50 percent of the central government’s funds for higher education in the last three years went to just 3 percent of students, those at IITs, IIMs and NITs. Yet these institutions cannot compete with ISB, XLRI or SP Jain in placements or reputation.

Where does the money go. Execution failures, corruption, and a bureaucratic maze where accountability vanishes through revised timelines. Meanwhile, as one faculty member from IIM Jammu pointed out, their international conference reimbursements are rejected while they are charged for minor wear and tear in campus facilities.

NLUs face the mirror-opposite problem, chronic underfunding that creates its own pathologies.

Unlike IIMs swimming in central government funds, NLUs, classified by the University Grants Commission as state universities (established under State Acts), survive on limited grants from respective state governments. They do not receive regular UGC grants, forcing independent fundraising with severe limitations.

The insufficient funding spirals into cascading problems. To compensate, NLUs charge exorbitant fees, forcing students into educational loans. This restricts career choices, as graduates must pursue high-paying corporate jobs to service debt, even when their passion lies in litigation or academia.

Even Tier-1 NLUs charge more than top IITs despite not offering equally remunerative packages.

The cruel irony is this. IIMs fail despite abundant funding. NLUs fail due to inadequate funding. Students at both pay ₹20 plus lakhs for substandard experiences.

The Mess, Literally, Across Institutions

On supposedly elite campuses, the mess contract becomes a microcosm of institutional rot that transcends the IIM-NLU divide.

"I am a 2024–26 batch student currently at IIM Mumbai," begins one detailed account. "After our 4th module wrapped up, out of nowhere they sent a circular demanding a whopping ₹54,000 for our mess fee."

The student continues: "Previously, we paid monthly mess fees and could deduct days we did not eat, or even opt out of the mess if we wanted to. For the next two modules, however, the management changed their policy. The fees were collected 10 months in advance and it was made compulsory for every student to register for the mess."

The timing was suspiciously coincident with signing a contract with a new vendor called Sakthi Kitchen, chosen for offering lower costs. The per-day mess rate jumped from ₹140 to ₹180.

"This is not the first time our college has been in hot water over mess management," the student notes. "There have been multiple controversies about mess hygiene. One batchmate was hospitalised after ingesting phenyl-contaminated water jars."

The issue seemed to have reached a resolution with the management revising their policies after the uproar.

The name Sakthi Kitchen should ring alarm bells. An IIM Indore 2023 alumnus alleges that Sakthi Kitchen was fined ₹8 lakhs in 2021 after a major food poisoning incident. Similar incidents occurred at IIM Kozhikode involving the same vendor.

Across newer IIMs, Ranchi and Nagpur, mess contracts are reportedly awarded through nepotism rather than competitive bidding. The food quality ranges from mediocre to hazardous.

The NLUs mirror this dysfunction with disturbing precision.

At NLU Jabalpur, the mess situation achieved new depths of absurdity. "A year ago NLUJ introduced a mess policy," explains a student. "They got in a tender so awfully negotiated that the vendor has restricted the amount of vegetable each student gets, and restricted egg allocation to one per student. Only rice and daal is unlimited, thank heavens. Daal is watered down on most days. Non-veg is served only on two days, again highly restricted."

In 2019, students at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (RGNUL), Patiala carried out multiple protest rounds over the suspension of six students who raised objections to mess food quality. Students at Himachal Pradesh National Law University (HPNLU) had also protested the lack of basic amenities, food and infrastructure at their university.

The Placement Farce: IIMs

The midnight recruitment email at IIM is not an anomaly. It is symptomatic of a deeper crisis the institutions desperately try to hide.

Over the past few years, newer IIMs expanded rapidly, opening multiple campuses and increasing batch sizes. The harsh truth is that they are struggling to provide decent placements. Placement reports are manipulated. Colleges include international offers that only a handful receive, count multiple offers for the same person, and inflate numbers by including hypothetical bonuses in CTC calculations.

The numbers, obtained through RTI requests, paint a devastating picture.

IIM Amritsar: 30 students unplaced, 48 opt-outs from a cohort of 318 in 2024-25. That is nearly 25 percent of the batch without jobs.

IIM Trichy: 26 out of 384 students opted out of MBA placements. Another RTI revealed 59 students were without jobs until May, one in every seven students.

"2024–25 was a fairly turbulent year," IIM Trichy acknowledged in response to inquiries, with 26 students "voluntarily" opting out.

The scare quotes around "voluntarily" deserve emphasis.

Ideally, the opt-out option is meant for students looking to pursue higher studies, join their family business, or start their own. But the pattern emerging across newer IIMs tells a different story.

In June, IIM Kashipur asked about 70 MBA students to fill opt-out forms after they failed to land job offers. The email, sent by the student placement committee under the supervision of the chairperson (placement), read: "As we approach the closure of our current placement cycle, we want all the unplaced students to formally opt out by completing and submitting the Opt-Out Form."

Translation: sign this paper admitting you are withdrawing, so we can claim 100 percent placement rates.

IIM Amritsar escalated the farce in July by informing students they would be automatically opted out if they did not secure job offers by February 2026. The involuntary voluntary opt-out, a bureaucratic innovation worthy of Kafka.

Summer Internships: The EdTech Wasteland

Summer internships at IIMs, supposedly stepping stones to final placements, have devolved into institutional embarrassment.

"Check IIM Kashipur’s audited placement report," suggests one student. "They themselves have mentioned that during summer internships, 83 out of 377 are placed with no stipends. Also an additional 94 did not seek internships through the placement cell, which is very odd."

The median Summer Internship Programme stipend tells the story in rupees. IIM Calcutta: ₹3.4 lakhs for two months combined. IIM Sirmaur: ₹40,000 for the same period.

"A large chunk of students end up with edtech internships offering stipends as low as ₹5,000 to ₹10,000," explains a recent graduate. "In some cases, students are placed in unpaid internships, just so the institute can claim a 100 percent placement rate. These internships barely add value, and when final placements come around, students are left scrambling with little to show for experience."

The Placement Crisis: NLUs

"The placements at all lower ranked NLUs have been dismal throughout the years," states a law graduate bluntly.

At NLU Mumbai, the supposed location advantage evaporates under scrutiny. "While there are plenty of opportunities in Mumbai, you will have to find them yourself as the IP cell hardly does anything," explains a student.

The placement struggles have pushed students toward an uncomfortable conclusion. Private institutions with better infrastructure and locations are outperforming government-designated premier law universities. Jindal Global Law School, Symbiosis Law School Pune, and School of Law Christ Bangalore, private colleges that lack the NLU brand, are increasingly preferred by students who can afford the choice.

These private institutions offer what lower-rung NLUs cannot: functional infrastructure, better corporate connections, and locations that matter for internships and placements. The NLU brand, that began as a guarantee of quality, has become a hollow promise for institutions beyond the top tier.

When the Committee Becomes the Crisis

At IIM Udaipur and IIM Kozhikode, students were removed from placement processes for misconduct, often meaning they questioned committee decisions or raised concerns about transparency.

"The student committees function more like internal political systems," describes a student from IIM Nagpur. "Favouritism, internal groupism, and gatekeeping are common. Students who raise legitimate concerns or disagree with decisions are often sidelined. The faculty and administration rarely intervene, leaving students to navigate a power-driven ecosystem with little recourse."

The total fee at these institutions exceeds ₹20 lakhs. For that amount, students get edtech sales internships with no learning curve, final placements in cold-calling profiles, or no placements at all.

Silver Linings in the Darkness

Amidst the institutional failures, some bright spots emerge that deserve recognition.

IIM Ranchi has made genuine progress. The institution now operates from a permanent campus, finally delivering on promises that seemed perpetually deferred during the temporary campus years. A counter-narrative from Bhavesh Shaha, part of the IIM Ranchi 2024 batch, offers important perspective: "I never genuinely felt the need for AC, but rather needed heaters (were allowed in rooms). I am from Pondy (Southern India), so the heat did not bother me as much as the horrible cold."

On sports facilities under development at Ranchi, Shaha adds context that challenges the dropout narrative: "If this is a deal-breaker for you, makes sense. Many play football and cricket in the open, you have a volleyball net. Some take the institution bus or autos to go to a nearby basketball ground. We also had the privilege of being the only IPM batch at an IIM to have single rooms, so that could also be a factor."

More importantly, he emphasises the human element: "I would disagree and my bias might seep in. We had a lot of fun even at the temporary campus, we had crazy fun at the permanent campus too. This feels like copium. You would have fun at KMC or IIM Ranchi, it is mainly dependent on the quality of people around you, and you will find life-long friends at both places."

IIM Ranchi also offers one of the most progressive attendance policies among Indian business schools. Ten out of twenty courses require mandatory attendance, allowing significant space for personal development, side projects, and exploration beyond academics. In a landscape of rigid bureaucracy, this flexibility represents genuine pedagogical innovation.

These positives matter. They demonstrate that institutional failure is not inevitable, that progress is possible when administrations prioritise student experience over bureaucratic convenience. The question is why such sensible policies remain exceptions rather than norms across newer IIMs and NLUs.

The Market Excuse That Rings Hollow

Defenders of newer IIMs and NLUs point to market saturation. When examining placement struggles, one must first consider the job market as a whole. The market is becoming increasingly saturated every year. Colleges are significantly increasing seats. Competition is immensely high and the quality of students has become more variable with increasing volumes.

There is truth here. MBA seats have doubled in recent years, naturally diluting average quality.

One hiring manager states bluntly: "My org hires LSR BCom students at the same role and same pay as IIM Kashipur, Rohtak, Amritsar students."

"If MBA seats have gone 2x in the past years, of course the quality will go down. Couple that with bad attitudes (unprofessional, inflexible, against sales roles) of grads, many companies block these campuses because they are not worth the effort."

The alumni network advantage compounds the problem. Older IIMs built decades of corporate relationships. "First batch of A and C are retired Chairman or women and CxOs now," notes a student. "But how deep can a Baby IIM have their alumni considering they are only 9 years old. Best is middle management and the oldest people could be 35-37."

ISB graduates receive preferential treatment because of corporate-institute relationships and alumni strength. "There are mechanisms set by the alumni network in corporate that enable growth of pedigree MBA grads. Basically, they have a strong sense of helping their own."

But here is where the excuse collapses. Private colleges with even less pedigree are outperforming baby IIMs. "Because private colleges are better. Colleges like BIMTECH, IMI, IMT, GLIM, GIM, XIMB, TAPMI are way better than baby IIMs like Sambalpur, Sirmaur, Bodh Gaya."

SIBM Pune, established in 1978, leverages an alumni network aging close to 40 years. IIM Udaipur, established in 2011, cannot compete, despite government funding SIBM will never receive.

What Elite Actually Looks Like

Harvard University maintains a 50.7 billion dollar endowment. Stanford has 36.3 billion. Yale has 41.4 billion. Oxford and Cambridge draw upon centuries of accumulated resources, donor networks that span generations, and infrastructure that reflects genuine institutional excellence.

The specifics reveal the chasm. Wharton’s Huntsman Hall at the University of Pennsylvania features 48 group study rooms with videoconferencing capabilities, a 300-seat auditorium with simultaneous translation technology, and a behavioural lab for cutting-edge research. Cornell’s Johnson School operates from Sage Hall, where students access Bloomberg terminals, dedicated career management spaces, and a facility designed by renowned architects specifically for collaborative learning.

Harvard Law School’s Langdell Library holds over 2 million volumes, operates 24 or 7 during exam periods, and provides carrels for every student who requests one. Yale Law School maintains an 8:1 student-faculty ratio, ensuring personalised attention that transforms legal education from rote learning to intellectual mentorship. These are not luxuries, they are baseline expectations at institutions genuinely committed to excellence.

Their facilities are not just better than India’s premier institutions. They operate in different universes. State-of-the-art research centres versus waterlogged hostels. Twenty-four-hour libraries with climate control versus paint-fume dormitories with flickering lights. World-class dining halls versus nepotistic mess contracts serving watered-down dal. Bloomberg terminals and behavioural labs versus hostel rooms doubling as study spaces during power cuts.

Even state universities abroad, public institutions in countries with comparable or lower per-capita GDP, offer better facilities than our IIMs and NLUs.

The comparison is not meant to celebrate Western education or denigrate Indian potential. It is to highlight a brutal truth. We claim to build world-class institutions while delivering third-rate infrastructure to students who fought through brutal entrance exams believing in meritocracy.