MBA from global B-schools pays

Source: The Economic Times (ET Wealth), April 15, 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

XLRI plans to set up new campus; on overdrive to raise Rs. 1 billion

XLRI, Jamshedpur has embarked upon a fund-raising drive with plans to notch up Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) in endowments over the next five years. The institute is tapping both its alumni and corporates and, along the lines of B-schools abroad, is open to naming centres or facilities after donors.

So far, the institute has raised around Rs. 16.2 million. HCL Technologies Vice-Chairman and CEO Vineet Nayar, an alumni as well as board of governors’ member, has also pledged Rs. 10 million in his individual capacity, which will go towards XLRI’s proposed Delhi campus.

XLRI Director E Abraham said: “We have formed a core committee of alumni who are now working on how to take the endowment fund initiative forward. This is a common practice abroad, even in Jesuit schools. We will also be approaching companies that rank among our major recruiters.”

XLRI that was founded in 1949 has so far has been functioning almost entirely on its own funds. The institute already has a surplus of around Rs. 225 million. The XLRI Endowment Fund initiative was taken up by the 1983 batch when it met in 2008 to celebrate their silver jubilee of graduating. Earlier this year, the director and S Sarin made presentations at the summer alumni meets in Delhi, Kolkata, Pune and Mumbai attended by over 1,500 alumni. The institute also plans to hold alumni meets in New York, Boston, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles to encourage alumni to give back to the institute.

The funds raised will go towards upgradation of existing physical infrastructure to world-class standards, creating chair professorships, providing scholarship and loans to needy students, supporting global research as well as the social initiatives of XLRI in the area of education for the poor, rural entrepreneurship and the like.

“A large chunk of this will also go towards our new campus which will come up in Delhi,” said E Abraham. The new campus is estimated to cost about Rs. 500-600 million. “Besides regular programmes, it will also offer niche programmes. We have initiated talks with Georgetown University and plan to set up a School of Foreign Service as well as a School of Public Policy,” said Abraham. XLRI is setting up an international hostel in Jamshedpur for its just-launched three-country global MBA programme.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), August 14, 2012

After Harvard, Wharton looks for a classroom in India

The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, is the latest entrant to the growing Rs. 350-crore (Rs. 3.5 billion) executive education space in India. The school, ranked number two by Financial Times in its Global MBA rankings, said it will soon have its own centre in India.

“Within the next two years we will have a physical presence in India. Through the centre, we will not only conduct executive education, but will also be able to use it as a place for the alumni to converge and our faculty to convene for research. We will have office space and classrooms. We are looking at a centralised location and Mumbai is what suits our needs the most, as of now,” said Jason Wingard, Vice Dean, Executive Education at the Wharton school.

Wharton joins the likes of University of Chicago, Harvard Business School, Tuck School of Business, INSEAD, Oxford University’s Said Business School and Duke University, among others to offer their executive education programmes in India.

“We have realised that many of the emerging markets continue to grow and it is important for us to have a variety of locations around the world. We are present in India, China and Brazil.” Wharton receives about 10,000 executive education participants on its campus every year and India is among the top three countries in terms of participants from outside the US.

“We offer both, custom programme as well as open enrolment. We work with many companies in India including Wipro technologies and ICICI Bank among others. Because of the deep relationship that we have with companies and the large alumni base we have in India, we chose India to offer the first certificate in India. We have to finalize the range of services we would be offering beyond executive education.”

Wharton will begin a certificate programme, the Accelerated Development Program (ADP), for business leaders in India from January 2012. Track one of the programme will have three Wharton executive education programmes in India at Rs. 660,000 (plus service tax). Track two will see two executive education programmes in India and one in Philadelphia in the US for Rs. 500,000 (plus service tax) and Wharton Philadelphia programme at a discount of 25 per cent.

Three executive education programmes will also be offered – Customer Driven Marketing: Strategies for Profitable Growth; Strategic Thinking and Leadership for Growth and Using Finance for Strategic Growth. The programmes would be for four days. A fourth programme, focused on leadership, will be added in the second-half of 2012.

Source: Business Standard, October 13, 2011