News Today covers IIPM Blog Wars

Chennai based eveninger News Today has a detailed description of the IIPM Blog Wars. On a related note, The Hindu heaped praise on AC in an article published today. It also said that IIPM is the ‘costliest’ Business School in India. Haven’t they heard of ISB before? BTW is it really an accomplishment if a B-School is referred to as the ‘costliest’ B-School?

For long it has been presumed that blogs are mere personal diaries of those with spare time, a PC and an incurable urge to air their views. But India is now slowly waking up to the fact that blogs are the new form of 'citizen journalism' and indeed can do investigative stories that can rival anything that mainstream media (MSM) is capable of offering.

Several bloggers independently started digging into the claims of IIPM and Arindam and his father Malay Chaudhuri, who started IIPM. Blogs like thalassamikra.blogspot.com, which have been able to cross check what Arindam and Malay had claimed, have come up with some startling revelations (that are verifiable by anyone).

IIPM's European connections also emerge as highly bogus. IIPM is said to have links with institutes like IMI, BBS, EBMS, and GCME. But as thalassamikra.blogspot.com points out the websites of the International Management Institute, the Barcelona Business School, and the European Business Management School look suspiciously similar and have been designed by the same man Thierry Kirschstein. The suggestion here is that all of them look like a cooked up link.

This blog has also sought out NARIC-Vlaanderen, a Belgian government organisation that determines the validity of degrees offered both within and outside Belgium for use within Belgium and received this as a reply: 'The International Management Institute in Antwerp and Brussels is a very very very very very very private institution... was a diploma mill. The qualifications awarded by this kind of institution are NOT at all recognised by any Flemish or Belgian education authority. Holders of such qualifications may NOT claim any academic (further studies) or civil right (access to regulated professions)'.

IIPM, which is one of the costliest management institutions in India, now has a lot to explain while blogs can start to enjoy their moment under the sun.