Fall of techies: Non-engineers now dominate India's top B-schools as engineering numbers decline
Indian business schools are changing. Top IIMs now have more students from non-engineering backgrounds. This includes commerce, humanities, and arts. IIM-Indore, IIM-Lucknow and IIM-Ahmedabad are leading this change. Companies now want skills beyond engineering. This shift reflects evolving corporate needs. B-schools are adapting to value diverse skills. This is a major realignment of business education in India.
iStock India's leading business schools are seeing a major shift in student backgrounds. More than half of the MBA students at top IIMs now come from non-engineering fields such as commerce, humanities, economics, and arts. This marks a clear change from decades when engineers dominated admissions, a TOI report stated.
At IIM-Indore, the flagship MBA batch for 2025-27 has just over 55% students from non-engineering streams. IIM-Lucknow follows closely with nearly 53%, while IIM-Ahmedabad's latest batch is about half non-engineers. This rise has happened rapidly in just a few years.
Experts describe this trend as a 'conscious academic design' to meet evolving corporate needs. Companies today value skills like critical thinking, creativity, communication, and emotional intelligence more than before.'At IIM-Indore, representation of non-engineers has risen steadily over five years,' said director Himanshu Rai. He noted that in the 2025-27 postgraduate programme, there are 179 women and 91 men from non-engineering streams, outnumbering engineers. Earlier batches had a smaller share of non-engineers: about 41% in 2021-23, a third in 2022-24, nearly 39% in 2023-25, and about 42% in 2024-26.At IIM-Ahmedabad, the share of non-engineers jumped from 33% to 50% in just three years. Director Bharat Bhasker explained, 'The institute began introducing academic categories about a decade ago to ensure diversity.' He added, 'An increase in applications from non-engineers has led to a healthy balance in classrooms.'
At IIM-Lucknow, 268 of 507 students in the 2025-27 MBA batch come from non-engineering backgrounds. Director MP Gupta said, 'Commerce-related courses have attracted the most students.'This change reflects a broader realignment of business education in India. Top B-schools are adapting to a corporate world that increasingly values diverse skills beyond engineering and technology.
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