Indian B-schools think global, Train sights on foreign students

Indian business schools have taken a step towards becoming international classrooms, with premier business school SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR) becoming one of the first in the country to sanction 36 seats in its flagship MBA programme for foreign nationals. The move follows a sanction by regulatory body All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) last year allowing institutes to enroll 15 per cent international students over and above the sanctioned intake. The Mumbai-based SPJIMR is the first to latch on to the opportunity to add global diversity to its classes by opening its ongoing admission for the batch of 2014-16 to foreign nationals.

The institute will admit 15 per cent foreign nationals over and above its 240 seats for local students. “Indian business schools are very India-centric – a sharp contrast to top global institutions. Indian B-schools need to be global, attract talent from across the globe and place talent globally,” says Atish Chattopadhyay, Deputy Director, PGDM programme, SPJIMR. International students can add to diversity, lead to learning experience, boost forex earnings for the country and lead to foreign placements, he says, adding, “It will help create global managers. With our graduates being placed in different countries it will also lead to a clout with global companies.”

This year, the institute has advertised the international students’ seats on its website, and plans to conduct roadshows in foreign countries to attract students. It has received 32 applications from countries such as UK, Africa, South East Asia, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The admission process is open till March. However, there is still some way to go before the move can gain wider acceptance.

While most top institutes in the country, including the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), intend to globalise the classroom, so far the intake of foreign nationals has mostly been in the form of short-duration student exchange programmes. “One of the reasons for the poor showing of Indian institutions in foreign rankings is (the lack of) internationalisation,” says SS Mantha, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The representation of international students in technical institutions is almost miniscule. About 15 per cent to 20 per cent of seats in technical institutions go vacant every year, he explains.

However, because of the confusion surrounding AICTE-University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations, it may be difficult for many institutes to take in foreign nationals from this year itself, says Mantha. A Supreme Court judgement in April last year had stripped AICTE of its regulatory powers, stipulating that technical institutions affiliated to universities do not fall under AICTE’s purview. However, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) announced last week that it will push for restoring these powers by amending the AICTE Act.

For a few top institutes like the Indian School of Business (ISB), which is known for attracting international students, faculty and research, the initial strategy has focused on student exchange tie-ups. ISB has tie-ups with 43 global schools with around 100 students coming in every year between October and April. In addition, the institute conducts marketing drives in select cities in the US, Europe, and Singapore to attract foreign nationals to its flagship post graduate programme in management.

However, the volume of such students is less than 5 per cent of the total class strength. “India is still seen as a technical hub, not an education hub. However, there is a growing interest among foreign students in learning from emerging economies, particularly India,” says VK Menon, Senior Director, Career and Admissions at ISB. In the medium term, more foreign students will come to India to study, he adds.

At the IIMs, there is an unofficial understanding to reserve about 10 per cent of seats for foreign nationals over and above those for Indian students, says Debashis Chatterjee, Director, IIM-Kozhikode. However, cut-off points are high and most foreign students with such scores would go to either a Harvard or MIT, which means the IIMs will need to upgrade their infrastructure and quality, says Chatterjee. Further, he explains, the Indian job market is very competitive and for a foreign student, getting a job here after a full-time degree is tough.

“Unless there are formal guidelines in place, we do not see foreign students’ intake going up for the next five years,” he says. But if India has to be seen as an education destination, there has to be a pull.

Source: The Economic Times, January 10, 2014

B-school student body not diverse enough

While diversity is the buzzword at premier management institutes worldwide, there seems to be little change in the student profile of Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) this year, with engineering graduates still dominating the composition of new batches.

Of the candidates joining IIM-Calcutta this year, 90.4 per cent are from an engineering background. At IIM-Bangalore, this percentage is as high as 91.09 in the 2013-15 batch — up from 88.84 per cent in the previous batch.

Other streams, such as commerce, science, management and the arts have seen only 21, 8, 4 and 2 students respectively in the total batch-size of 404 students at IIM-Bangalore.

While premier management institutes in India have always had a skewed representation of engineers, internationally acclaimed business schools have made a conscious effort to include diverse candidates from various backgrounds.

For instance, Harvard Business School’s 2015 class comprises 43 per cent economics and business undergraduate majors, 39 per cent of science, technology, engineering and mathematics students and 18 per cent students studying humanities and social sciences.

In the 2014 batch of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, 46 per cent of students are from the humanities and social sciences background, 37 per cent from engineering, mathematics and natural sciences and 17 per cent from business, while 18 per cent are advanced degree holders.

Prof M. Jayadev, Chairperson, Admissions and International Aid, IIM-Bangalore, says: “The number of engineers appearing for the CAT (Common Admission Test) entrance is much higher than the non-engineering stream candidates. This, Jayadev said, tends to ensure a higher proportion of engineering students get into the IIMs. Traditionally, IIMs have given higher weightage to CAT, which places greater emphasis on quantitative skills, and not on other sciences. This puts prospective students with a social science background at a disadvantage.

Some years ago, the admission weightages given by IIMs were an internal matter known only to the relevant institutes. But things started changing after the Right to Information (RTI) Act came into force. “Before the RTI Act came into existence, most IIMs used to modify the admission process a bit to add diversity to the student profile. At that time, the strength of engineering students was only around 60-65 per cent in the batches. However, with too many questions being asked about the admission process, IIMs do not have the liberty to tweak the admission process,” said the CEO of a leading financial institution and an IIM-A graduate.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, June 24, 2013

IIMs might lower GMAT bar for foreign students

To improve their global quotient and attract more foreign students, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are planning to lower the graduate management admission test (GMAT)’s cut-off score for the flagship two-year management programme (PGP) and the one-year full-time MBA. IIM directors said the GMAT cut-off used by IIMs, at over 700, was too high for candidates to even qualify for interviews.

“As the institute builds its global reputation, it will have to take steps to internationalise the students admitted to its academic programmes,” said Samir Barua, former Director, IIM-Ahmedabad. “This may require the institute to lower its cut-off in GMAT for admission, particularly for the PGP. Since potential applicants with such high GMAT scores easily get admission to the best schools in the world, practically no candidates apply to the PGP of the institute.”

IIM-A uses a cut-off of 760 or so, which Barua said was high. The GMAT scores of the selected candidates of the past batches have been 695 to 728. GMAT is administered by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), a US-based organisation.

IIMs said lowering the cut-off significantly enhance chances of getting more foreign students. “Citizenship diversity is a major component for world ranking of management education institutes. Currently, we are marked almost zero for it,” said an IIM-A faculty member on condition of anonymity. “By bringing down the GMAT cut-off, we could attract more foreign students and enhance citizenship diversity. Out of a batch of 400-odd students, a good 20-25 foreign students would make such a difference and also increase our chances of getting ranked higher as a global B-school.”

IIM-A is the only management school in India ranked among the top-100 schools globally by The Economist. The institute is also the only management school in India that has all the three post-graduate programmes ranking high globally. Its two-year post-graduate programme in management is ranked seventh and the post-graduate programme for executives (PGPX) is ranked 11th among comparable programmes globally by the Financial Times.

Devi Singh, Director of IIM-Lucknow, too, said the GMAT cut-offs at IIMs were too high. “Every IIM is thinking of bringing down the cut-off for GMAT scores. In addition to this, IIMs need to create an eco-system to attract more foreign students at our campuses. More foreign students increase chances of higher ranking among global B-schools.”

There is no cut-off score for GMAT at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, which introduced the one-year management programmes in India. 

Source: Business Standard, June 23, 2013

Italian B-School Caps Intake of Indians at 12%

SDA Bocconi School of Management at Milan, Italy – among the top global MBA programmes under the FT ranking – has for the first time this year put a 12% cap on the intake of Indian students in its one-year international MBA programme. The institute says the move is aimed at maintaining parity in the MBA batch. Indian students form the single largest majority after Italians at the institute. The MBA Class of 2013 at SDA Bocconi School of Management has 12% Indians, compared with 27% Italians. The rest of Asia, including Japan, China and Pakistan, represents 7%.

“There are too many Indian students in the MBA class, prompting us to limit intake. The number of Indian applications has been increasing over time. But the percentage of Indian applicants admitted has been capped to the level of the last intake at 12%,” said Alessandro Giuliani, Managing Director of MISB Bocconi. The Mumbai-based MISB Bocconi, is the Indian initiative of SDA Bocconi School of Management. This year, the institute saw the largest increase in applications from Indian candidates – another reason for the cap on intake of Indians. The basic selection criterion for admission into the MBA course at SDA Bocconi is GMAT.

“Managing cultural differences during the MBA experience is part of their (SBA Bocconi) pedagogy and hence they are emphasising on mixing students from different geographies and cultures in small groups in order to stimulate cross-cultural diversity,” said Giuliani. The Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2013 placed SDA Bocconi School of Management at 39th place. Two management institutes from India featured in the top 50 list, including IIM- Ahmedabad at 26 and Indian School of Business at 34. The list was topped by Harvard Business School.

SBA Bocconi’s international MBA class, which has a total strength of 90, has students from 32 countries, including India, China, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, UK, and US, among others. “Our admission policy aims at obtaining a wide geographical inclass representation to safeguard the internationalisation level of a programme ranked in the FT ranking,” added Paolo Morosetti, SDA Professor of Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management Department and Director of the Executive MBA Programme at SDA Bocconi.

The Indians and Chinese form the largest chunk of the student community in most global B-schools, after local students. And though top schools like the Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, or The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania try to maintain cultural and ethnic diversity in their class, there is no formal cap on intake.

According to an IIM-Bangalore study by Professor Rupa Chanda and Shahana Mukherjee (May 2012), UK, Germany and France receive the most number of Indian students for higher education. However, Indian students are exploring other countries in the EU such as Sweden, Italy, Ireland and Denmark, where “education is considerably cheaper and part-time jobs are easier to secure”.

Source: The Economic Times, April 12, 2013