I read this in the business week forum and choosing to paste it for your ready reference..

From: bizguru Mar-9 6:41 am
To: elixir5429 (43 of 57)

61765.43 in reply to 61765.41

Hi Elixir...,

Congratulation on your MSIA offer. MSIA is simply one year MBA program and hence more rigorous. You need to complete 48 Credit Hours in a year (including summer session) as compared to 60 Credit hours for the regular 2 year MBA program. Placement stat for MSIA resembles to that of MBA - Average Salary might be a bit higfher for MSIA as folks in MSIA have more years of pre MBA experience (on an average). You can ask the Admission and/or Placement office for the statistics of the two programs in the last few years.

I won't worry about the MSIA tag - Folks like CEO of Accenture, Joe Forehand as well as some other CEOs (Ex CEOs of Pratt and Whitney, Ingersol Rand, etc.) graduated from MSIA program of Krannert. In fact Krannert had only one year MSIA program earlier. They started MSM (now renamed as MBA) program much later - I think its early 70s. When I attended Purdue, MBA program was known as MSM and I had no problem with the recruiters as such.

I have seen people switching between MSIA and MBA program - Check it from the Admission office about the latest norms on this.