>’MBA in oil and gas will benefit Indian students’

>International B-schools are making a beeline to enter the Indian market not only with general management programmes, but specialised MBA courses. The latest to join the fray was UK-based Robert Gordon University offering a programme in Oil and Gas management. University Director Andrew Turnbull tells Piyali Mandal that India is the second biggest market for them after Nigeria. Edited Excerpts:

Do you think specialised MBA courses will be popular with Indian students?
Yes. So far we have got remarkably good response from Indian students. I have already interviewed students in Delhi. We will then proceed to Mumbai. We are seeing a lot of interest from the Indian students for the oil and gas management programme.

Are you targeting a specific number of students in India?
There is no thumb rule here. At any given point in time we have at least 10-15 Indian students on our campus in Aberdeen pursuing full-time management programmes. After Nigeria, we get maximum interest from Indian students. We offer full-time courses, part-time courses and distant learning programmes. Overall, we have 200 students. In the full-time programme, we have two courses — the generic MBA and the Oil and gas management. The two full-time courses put together will have a capacity of sixty students and we don’t want to increase the number. Oil and gas management is a specially designed course and we want to have only thirty students every year for it.

Isn’t Rs. 13 lakh (Rs. 1.3 million) for your MBA course pretty expensive? And, what about placements?
Well, we offer scholarships too. The maximum we offer in scholarships is a waiver of half of the course fee and the minimum scholarship is £3,000. For the management programme in oil and gas our fee is Rs. 13 lakhs but for the standard management course it is Rs. 12 lakhs (Rs. 1.2 million). Students should have minimum three years of job experience in management-related fields. However, the average work experience of our students is six years. They study core management subjects and then they tailor the degree themselves by choosing electives in the second part of the first nine months. In the last three months they take up assignments with companies. They complete the project and submit a report by early September which is the final element of their degree. We have a 100 per cent placement record. Since, the MBA programme is for students with work experience, placement is not an issue with them.

What made you market this programme in India?
The MBA in oil and gas management is specifically tailored for the need of the oil and gas sector. With the energy market in India growing, companies like Cairn Energy and other international energy giants, are creating job opportunities for people. Here, a management degree in oil and gas will benefit the Indian students by not only exposing them to a world of opportunities but also give them a degree which will qualify them to work anywhere in the world. No one in the UK offers an MBA specifically for this sector. Aberdeen, UK, is the capital of oil and gas in Europe with an unending demand for skilled people. The programme is designed to provide experienced practitioners in the oil and gas sector with advanced business, management and leadership skills needed to function at a strategic level as a contemporary energy manager. There are hotspots for the industry in West Asia, Brazil, and Australia.

Do you plan to open an India centre?
No. We work in India through our agents. We go from city to city to select the right candidate. We recruit from any or all of them. At this stage we don’t intend to open an office. I am sure the Indian students also want to benefit from mixing with students from other nations.

Source: Business Standard, April 21, 2011

>Menon committee seeks more autonomy for Central varsities

>Central universities could soon allow a student to pursue two independent degree programmes simultaneously, if a key recommendation made by a committee suggesting a roadmap for increased autonomy at Central educational institutes (CEIs) is accepted by the government. Headed by Prof. N. R. Madhava Menon, an eminent legal educationist, the committee has recommended a series of measures towards increasing academic, financial and administrative autonomy at the Central universities and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

The report, accessed by The Indian Express, calls for doing away with the office of the Visitor in Central universities and vesting these powers in the office of the Chancellor, freedom to recruit distinguished faculty from anywhere in the world, to take up consultancy assignments and at the same time open the institute to independent reviews. Advocating a thorough revisiting of the process of appointment of a V-C, a five-year tenure for the V-C and reappointment of a V-C if the Executive Council so recommends, this committee has also suggested more accountability at CEIs.
The recommendations say all faculty members must be subjected to a review once every five years by a committee appointed by the Executive Council and fast tracked promotions or advance increments may be given to performers while further increments may be withheld in case of non-performers. Each Central varsity will also have to undergo a comprehensive review by an External Peer Review Board every 10 years and a department-wise review by subject experts every five years.

Recommending that established colleges with a good track record be elevated to university status, the committee has called for phasing out the affiliation system, as it feels that this has led to a decline in academic standards. For IIMs, the committee has recommended that they be allowed to award degrees like Central varsities and that they undertake a peer-based review of each department every five years.

Source: The Indian Express, April 21, 2011

>Super 30 founder is Europe journal’s global personality

>Mr. Anand Kumar, who founded Super 30, Bihar’s free coaching centre which helps economically backward students crack the Joint Entrance Exam of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (commonly known as IIT-JEE), has been selected by Europe’s magazine Focus as one of the global personalities who have the ability to shape exceptionally talented people. He is the only Indian named in the list.

“This gives me a feel that honest and sincere efforts get noticed, no matter where they are being made. I will carry on with my pursuit of educating poor children,” Mr. Kumar said.

Focus is published by Italy’s biggest publishing house Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. Apart from Mr. Kumar, the article also mentions Iwano Brugneti (athlete). Earlier, Time magazine had described Super 30 as the ‘best of Asia.’ Discovery channel made an hour-long documentary on Mr. Kumar, while a film made by a British producer won the “Viewers’ Choice Award” in the Los Angeles Film Fest.

Mr. Kumar, who could not go to the Cambridge University for higher studies because of extreme financial constraint after the death of his father, started the Ramanujam School of Mathematics in 1992 and founded the Super 30 in 2002.

Super 30 provides free food, stay and rigorous coaching for nearly a year to 30 poor and talented students selected through a two-tier examination process. Most of the successful candidates have come from the most underprivileged sections of society.

In the past eight years, the initiative has helped 212 students clear the IIT entrance test. In the last three years, all the 30 students of the institute made it to the IITs each year, drawing worldwide attention. The students have to pass a competitive test to get into Super 30 and then commit themselves to a year of 16-hour study each day, Mr. Kumar said.

Japanese channel NHK and Al Jazeera also made documentaries on Super 30. In 2007, industrialist Mukesh Ambani honoured Mr. Kumar with the ‘Real Hero Award.’ During his visit last year, US President Barack Obama’s envoy Rashad Hussain described Super 30 as the “best in India”.

Source: Business Line, April 21, 2011

>New IIMs may have common admission rule

>The country’s seven new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) may adopt common admission criteria from next year, saving thousands of IIM aspirants from having to evaluate complex selection eligibility separately for each of the B-schools. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and directors of the new IIMs will on Thursday discuss the dramatic new proposal and a slew of other joint initiatives the government wants the B-schools to undertake, top government sources have told HT.

Four of the new IIMs this year jointly held personal interviews (PIs) and group discussions (GDs) — the second stage of the admission process. But the Thursday’s meeting may for the first time lead to IIMs collaborating on setting joint selection criteria, sources said. The plan for common admission criteria apart from common PIs and GDs, listed on the agenda for the meeting, is aimed at simplifying the admission process for students.

Common admission criteria — if agreed to by the new IIMs — could include the Institutes sharing cut-off determination formulae and the weightage they decide to give to applicants’ class X, class XII and undergraduate marks.

The proposed admission reform for the new IIMs comes close on the heels of a controversial 2011 admission policy adopted by the B-schools, which denied several toppers in the Common Admission Test (CAT) even interview calls. These students — screened out because of criteria that would have eliminated them independent of how well they scored in the CAT, but which were hidden till the CAT results were declared — have challenged the IIMs in the Delhi high court. They are arguing they would not have wasted their time and resources if the IIMs had declared pre-CAT criteria upfront.

The directors and the MHRD will also discuss plans for faculty exchanges among them and using information technology to meet teacher shortage problems, and put in place a mechanism for regular interaction between the IIM heads.

Source: Hindustan Times, April 21, 2011

>Government yields a bit on new technical college norms

>Caving in to pressure, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has partially rolled back the changes in the guidelines governing setting up of new technical institutes. Earlier the MHRD had revised the guidelines and made it mandatory for new institutes to pay Rs. 90 lakh (Rs. 9 million) as security money for a period of 10 years. Now, it has rolled this back to the original level of Rs. 30 lakh (Rs. 3 million), but inserted a condition wherein this sum would have to be paid in cash to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex regulator of technical education in the country. In turn, AICTE would invest the money in a fixed deposit and retain the interest earnings in a special account.

Private colleges and institutes were, however, disappointed with the changes and wanted the government to restore the original guidelines. They believe the move is a dampener to setting up new institutes at a time when the cash-strapped government is unable to make similar investments. Earlier, institutes were required to only furnish a bank deposit receipt for eight years and were allowed to retain the interest earnings.

AICTE member secretary M.K. Hada confirmed the development. According to a senior MHRD official, who requested not to be named, increasing the security money to nearly a crore rupees “sounds little unfair” as it will hinder new institutes coming up. “When the focus is on increasing access to education and making gross enrollment ratio (GER)in higher education to 30% from the current 13%, you should not discourage education entrepreneurs. But, we have to closely monitor the quality,” the ministry official said.

Currently around two million students are pursuing technical education such as engineering, management, pharmacy, architecture among others. And overall, less than 15 million Indians are pursuing higher education, which is just 13% of those who are eligible or in the age group. HRD minister Kapil Sibal has reiterated on occasions that India would like to add 30 million more students in the higher education space and the country needs over 20,000 more colleges in a decade’s time.

Last year, the government approved at least 600 new institutes and if all of them submit a security money of Rs. 30 lakh (Rs. 3 million) each in cash, then AICTE will have a corpus of Rs. 180 crore (Rs. 1.8 billion) on which it will earn an interest. Moreover, the council will keep the cash in a bank fixed deposit for 10 years, according to the new rules.

H. Chaturvedi, Director of Birla Institute of Technology at Greater Noida and Alternate President of the Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI), an industry lobby, said, “At an interest rate of 9-10%, AICTE is expected to earn above Rs. 1,000 crore (Rs. 10 billion) from this process in a few years. They are a government body and should not become a fund accumulator.”

AICTE’s Hada said the regulator is not making money rather it will help students in case of an institute shuts down. He said AICTE has encountered few instances when colleges furnish some fake receipt or withdraw the money before the expiry of the stipulated period. This will guard against any such attempts.

Private sector owns over 70% of the over 10,000 technical colleges in the country and Chaturvedi argued “government should not make private education unviable that too when government cannot fulfil the demand for such colleges.” Chaturvedi indicated that this was part of a trend as earlier AICTE had imposed a charge Rs. 5,000 for each of the 10,364 technical colleges following the introduction of e-governance, earning it Rs. 5.18 crore (Rs. 51.8 million).

Source: Mint, April 21, 2011

>Auto-driver’s techie son heads for IIM-Calcutta

>Braving all odds, the son of a poor auto-rickshaw driver from Patna has made it to the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, (IIM-C). Anupam Kumar, a resident of Bhadra Ghat locality in Patna, scored a 97.09 percentile in the Common Admission Test (CAT) to qualify for the prestigious institution.

Anupam says he owes his success to his family. “Whatever I have achieved today is because of my parents,” he said, adding, “God should give everybody parents like mine.” He said his family had often found it difficult to make both ends meet while he was pursuing his goal. Anupam’s father Srikrishna Jaiswal has been an auto-rickshaw driver for more than two-and-a-half decades in Patna.

“Our family income was quite low but my father never lost hope. He has been working hard for many years for the family,” Anupam said. This was not the maiden success of Anupam, though. In 2005, he had cracked the joint entrance examination (JEE) for the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) as a student of Super 30, a free coaching institute for underprivileged children run by a young mathematician Anand Kumar.

He subsequently completed his first year of the M Sc. integrated course in Physics at IIT-Kharagpur but left it to join Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad. He has since been pursuing a five-year dual course there in mining engineering with MBA. Anupam’s father Jaiswal has been toiling hard for years to fulfill the dreams of his children. He leaves every day at 9 a.m. and returns home as late as 11 p.m., so that he could earn sufficient money to help his three children pursue their dreams.

Hardly surprising then, his eldest son Anupam’s success has brought cheers to his family. “God has answered our prayers,” Anupam’s mother Sudha Devi, a housewife, said, adding “When my son called up to say he has been selected for IIM-C, our joy knew no bounds.”

After doing his matriculation from a private school and intermediate from the Hindi medium Guru Gobind Singh College at Patna Sahib in first division, Anupam focused on making it to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). But the road to success was not easy because of resource crunch. Anupam said he started giving tuitions to children to supplement the income of his family. “I used to earn Rs. 1,000-1,200 by giving tuition to the students of classes VI and VII. At times, I had doubts whether I would be able to fulfill my dreams. I also thought of becoming a teacher at a coaching institute at one point of time,” the IIT protege said. Anupam had disappointment in store when he failed to qualify in his first attempt at IIT-JEE in 2004. But he got admission in Super 30 as one of the 30 students and went on to crack the IIT-JEE the next year.

Recalling his student, Anand said he was pleased to know that he had made it to the IIM-C. “He was a very talented and hard working boy,” the founder of Super 30 said. “I am sure he will go far in his career.” Anupam’s success has also inspired his younger brother Abhishek and sister Anamika to pursue careers in engineering.

Notwithstanding Anupam’s success, his father Jaiswal does not intend to stop driving his autorickshaw on the roads of Patna. When Anupam informed his father about his latest success, Jaiswal told him to keep focus on his studies. He would keep running the auto-rickshaw for another two years before thinking of retirement, his father said.

Source: Mail Today, April 21, 2011