Established in 1955, the Institute of Business Administration’s (IBA) first contractor was the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, rated as the number two business school in the world. The IBA had a good US and Pakistani faculty. Its second contactor, University of Southern California, helped more members of its Pakistani faculty in getting chances of being educated and trained in the US. But this became a problem when some of them did not return and those who did left after completing their contract periods. The market offered a much better remuneration than the university scales and nothing was done to retain the faculty.

IBA’s first Pakistani director Dr I.A. Mukhtar was removed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was followed by Dr Matin A. Khan and later by Dr Sharafat A. Hashmi. Both of them had relatively short terms. Dr Hashmi was followed by Dr Abdul Wahab, who had a long tenure.

Till 1994, the IBA was part of the University of Karachi (KU) and governed by a small Board of Governors headed by the Vice Chancellor of KU. In 1994, the IBA Act, 1994, was passed, which separated the IBA from KU. The IBA then got its own Board of Governors headed by a sitting judge of the Sindh High Court, appointed by the Governor of Sindh. The other members were heads of the Karachi Chambers and Federation of Commerce and Industry as well as the head of KU and Sindh University. The director of IBA is the secretary; there are two faculty members on the board and some eminent government officials as business executives.

Dr Wahab retired in 1999. Dr Pasha came as director for a brief period. There was a period of quick changes of leadership: Prof Fazle Hasan became the acting director. He was followed by Dr Zafar Zaidi, VC of KU, who held dual charge till Dr Javed Ashraf was appointed the director for four years.

Danishmand says that he was on the board as an appointee of the governor. “Before that I tried to persuade three senior LUMS faculty members to come to the IBA as director. All declined as they did not want to get into what they thought was a highly-divisive, politicised situation. Dr Javed Ashraf left for the US after only two years as director of IBA. The four-year BBA and a two-year MBA programme were initiated by him just before he left.

“I was working as chairman and CEO of Suzuki Motorcycles at the time. I had been told by Suzuki Japan that I could stay with the company as long as I wished. When Governor Mohammad Mian Soomro kindly asked me to join the IBA, I thanked and informed him that I already had a job, and if they could find someone else, they should do so. Later, I said that I would decide every matter on merit. They expressed their approval.

“I stayed at Suzuki Motocycles until Dr Javed Ashraf completed his two years. But I had started to think about the IBA as to what needed to be done. I thought of the slogan, ‘Leadership and ideas for tomorrow’ in this period, inspired by the Dean of Stanford Business School.

“Merit was the guiding principle in decision-making. Merit focuses on getting the best people — students, faculty, staff and so on.

When he joined the IBA as director, Danishmand took probably the most important decision of his stay at IBA at that time. The IBA students had always been chosen through written tests and interviews. For some years, half of the main class was chosen on merit — those who did the best in tests and about the same numbers were chosen though a ‘self-finance’ scheme. The latter half paid much higher fees than those paid by the group chosen on merit; this was done to obtain extra funds for the IBA.

“I though up a modified two-fee but totally merit-based system: all students would be chosen on merit only. Of those chosen on merit, the top 50pc would be asked to pay the old confessional fee while the remaining 50pc would pay the higher self-finance scheme fee. Any student, no matter which group he qualified for would receive financial support to the extent needed. We advertised this point whenever we started the admission process. The IBA got to admit the best of the applicants as students while it did not suffer any reduction in the total student fee intake.

“Every test was freshly-designed. No questions used earlier were repeated. So having access to previous papers was of no help in admission tests.

“I also decided that all payments and receipts at the IBA would be through banks. No cash would be paid or accepted.

“The IBA student application form asked for information about religion of the applicant. This information had no relevance to selection or dealing with students. This was deleted from the form,” he says.

On finding out that little money had been spent for acquiring library books and journals for the past many years, Danishmand says that he started with a relatively low allocation for reading material. “But that amount was more than the total allocation for the library over the previous 10 years. When Shaukat Aziz came to the IBA on its golden jubilee, I asked him and he approved Rs5m for making adjustments in the library,” he points out.

Discipline

Danishmand believes that to insure merit, it is necessary to enforce rules for all areas of work of the organisation without making any exceptions. “No compromise whatsoever in admissions was made even though one chief minister asked for admission of some young people. No quotas for children of faculty or personnel of the armed forces, etc., were even considered. If someone’s GPA fell below the minimum required level, that student was asked to go,” he says.

Cheating was discouraged strongly. “Rustication for five years was fixed and applied in the rare case that came up each semester within a day or two of the occurrence. Decision in all these matters were never reversed or amended,” he adds.

IBA has a culture of punctuality and regularity. “We had a simple system of checking that the faculty came on time. In case anyone arrived late, I would write a polite note hoping they would avoid late-coming again.”

About his faculty, he further says, “Special attention and importance was given to the faculty. We had a fulltime faculty of 42 when I took over as the director. Of these, two were PhDs. We had 1,800 students. When I left there were 85 fulltime faculty, 26 of them had doctorates.

“The total number of students was 2,000. With about 10pc increase in students, the faculty strength was up to 100pc. Faculty salaries were fixed after surveys of comparable institutions and were the best in the country. We tried our best to attract foreign scholars to teach at the IBA and were able to bring in some from the US, Japan, Germany, Sri Lanka for different periods.

“Research conferences were held. Foreign scholars, diplomats, entrepreneurs and senior managers were welcomed. A teacher evaluation questionnaire used at Cornell University was slightly modified and introduced at the IBA,” he says.

The IBA was getting the lowest grant from the HEC on per student basis. In order to attract and retain exceptional teachers, it needed to enhance income. “The IBA’s fee was higher than public-sector universities but lower than LUMS and some other private-sector business schools. We decided to raise fees moderately every year to remain in a position to meet faculty and other costs. However, in one year, the HEC asked us not to raise the fees. We argued that higher education was expanding and the government could not have the funds to subsidise this crucial sector. We were told that was a decision we had to accept. The very next year, the HEC started holding meetings with university administrations to ask them to become self-sufficient,” he says with a smile.

Programme innovation

The new four-year BBA programme started by the HEC in 2003 (2002 by IBA) would need at least 16 years of education. Previously, 16 years’ schooling meant a master’s degree. MBA became an 18 months programme. In many good US schools graduates are asked to leave the school for at least two years and work in business or industry before coming back. “Considering Pakistan’s culture and our condition, we designed a programme with industry participation, where a team of two or more graduates could work on a special project for a company and partner projects into effect. They were to work as a team. This innovative programme was well-received, not only by business, industry and our graduates, but also by some high-rated business schools in Lahore, which sent senior people to study this programme,” he concludes.

End of affiliations

A serious matter of concern were the consequences and problems arising out of affiliations, which had been granted earlier to six institutions. Three of these were in Karachi, one was in Sukkur and two were in Islamabad. Danishmand explains, “Because of the American system of study and evaluations, 60pc of the final grade was awarded by local faculty for quizzes, etc., while 40pc of the final grade was awarded by the IBA faculty. The degree given to successful students was the ‘IBA Karachi’ degree. This would mean absolute control of all of the teaching and grading process so that the employers could be sure of getting IBA quality for the brand; also if it could not be done, it would be unfair to our own students. We looked into the matter thoroughly and came to the conclusion that there was no way we could ensure fair grading, etc,” he says.

In the case of students of affiliated institutions:

a) In some cases, it was found that 59 out of 60 points had been given in some cases where the papers graded by our faculty showed that the student was doing poorly. But he or she still passed in the aggregate score.

b) An institution started offering courses that the IBA was not offering and it led to litigation because these courses were unauthorised.

c) In some cases, the IBA had to cope with issues of unqualified students who happened to be related to some one or the other.

Danishmand says, “Therefore it was decided that we would let students already registered with the IBA through the affiliated institutions to complete their programmes and after that we would not allow any new students to register with us through the affiliated institutions. The relationship was ended. Actually, three of these six institutions got approval of the Sindh government to award degrees in their own name.