Archive for the ‘Management Education’ Category
GMAT takers dip by 17% in 2013
The number of people who took the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) in the 12 months ending last June fell by 48,000, or 17%, from the year before, according to new data. That steep drop may sound like more air hissing out of the MBA bubble, at least to those who subscribe to the theory that business schools are over-swelled. For those who have been paying attention, the drop in test takers was apparent from a long way off. It has little to do with demand for MBAs in the job market.
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which publishes the GMAT, introduced a revamped version of the test in June 2012, adding a section on Integrated Reasoning. The new test—not the job market—is responsible for the lower numbers, wrote GMAC spokeswoman Tracey Briggs in an email: “Traditionally, there is an increase in testing volume before you change a standardised test as test takers opt for the familiar over the unfamiliar at transition time.”
Data from other graduate exams appear to bear her out. About 18% fewer candidates took the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) in the year after a revised test was introduced in August 2011. The number of test takers for the GED dropped even more precipitously when a new test was introduced in 2002. Some other nuggets from the GMAC data: Test takers in the US were especially apt to take a pass on the new test, with 22% fewer taking the exam last year. Women made up 42.5% of test takers, down slightly from the previous year. The average score for all test takers was 546.
Source: The Economic Times, January 7, 2014
Divine inspiration for business
A motley bunch of IT and financial sector executives, businessmen, couple of police officers, a few officers from the Indian Air Force, executives from public sector companies, are all listening intently to Debashis Chatterjee as he speaks, flitting between anecdote, stories, humour and discourse. Chatterjee, Director, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode, Kerala, is addressing a management development programme, based on his book ‘Timeless Leadership, 18 Leadership Sutras from The Bhagavad Gita’ and his class of senior executives is keen to learn what for them is evidently new ground.
The sylvan surroundings of IIM-K, built as it is on two hillocks with a breathtaking view of a carpet of coconut trees as far as the eye can see, is an ideal retreat for these executives to get away from the hurly-burly of corporate life and step back and take stock. Chatterjee seamlessly pulls in examples from everyday life to illustrate his point and draw parallels from the discourse Krishna, the charioteer, gives to the warrior Arjuna, who’s paralysed into inaction on the battlefield. At the end of a day’s session, Chatterjee talked to Business Line about on his book and what the corporate world can draw from what the Gita has to offer. His office, more windows than wall, offers a spectacular view of the valley below.
The corporate world is rocked by a crisis in ethics and values. In this context, does a study of the Gita’s tenets offer some relevant lessons? The Gita is a text for the foundational values of life. It’s not just a book of skills. The corporate world has a preponderant emphasis on skills without the discretion that must go behind these skill sets. If I am an investment banker then I am really honoured for my craft in creating financial models. But, the emphasis is largely on skills. That emphasis has been so disproportionate that we have not paid enough emphasis on values that run these skills, which need to serve the larger good. In business you collect money, you have investors and shareholders; all of them constitute the larger component of a business and the society in which you do business. If you look at only the craft as your business capability then you are missing the whole point of what business stands for. Businesses need to understand what is the larger good; leaders need to have a sense of what corporate dharma is, which is to generate more wealth with less resources for a larger number of people. That’s the dharmic tenet of a corporation.
So, what learnings can corporate executives draw from the Gita?
Businesses of today will have to look at the multiple impact of their business. They have to be conscious of the larger or the whole picture. In the Gita, Krishna is telling Arjuna, ‘Don’t be worried so much about your role as a part. As long as you connect to the whole, the part is taken care of.” The earlier Chairman of Hindustan Lever, Vindi Banga, used to say that whatever is good for Hindustan is good for Hindustan Lever. He didn’t say it the other way round. Narayana Murthy says ‘whatever is good for India is good for Infosys’. Why are they saying this? Because they are saying the same thing that the Gita is: what is good for the large is good for the small.
Krishna is painting the picture of the large and telling Arjuna, “See your little part in connection with the whole…once you do that your ability to act for the larger group will enhance progressively. Then you will not engage in unethical actions.” If Rajat Gupta was sensitive to the world, that he was actually depriving a genuine investor from his legitimate wealth by insider trading, he would not have done it. It’s a lack of sensitivity.
When were you fired by the principles of the Gita to draw parallels for the corporate world?
I have been hearing Gita since I was a child. But my real serious interest in studying it developed when my father started scribbling notes on this before he passed away in 2009. And the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a company asked me to do a series on the Gita for 18 days. I did that diligently, one chapter each day, without knowing why I was doing it. But the result was so phenomenal. All of a sudden you saw into the heart of things with so much more clarity. Later, when I was in Singapore, an editor of Wiley walked up to my office one day. I was contemplating a comparative work of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and the Gita. But, he wanted me to write a book based on the Gita. For that I needed to understand what it meant for corporations. This work is two years for writing. But the preparation for it was nine years. I read 200 editions of it. Everybody that you can think of has done some thing on the Gita: Tilak, Mahatama Gandhi, you name them…even CEOs are writing on it.
I even went to Rishikesh and met people who have made Gita their way of life, to understand what they had to say.
The book evolved as a result of this series of conversations. My earnest aspiration is to rescue the Gita from the vocabulary of an exclusive religious cult. I have nothing against religion but I have absolutely a problem when this is seen as a touch-me-not. The Gita’s message had to be transcreated for a new generation of learners who would not buy its esoteric notions. They would not see Krishna as an otherworldly being. So, I took examples form mundane existence (to draw parallels).
So, shorn of all the religiosity, the principles of the Gita you say are universal?
First of all it’s not meant to be a religious text but a way of living. It’s one of the works of psychology, depending on how you look at it. It has been interpreted by multiple people, so it lends itself to so many nuances, it’s a primary work, and my work is to interpret it for the corporate sector, transcreating the work in my own way.
Do you see India’s corporate leaders using these principles of the Gita?
If you see the top 100 wealth creators in India, 80 will swear by it, that their basic manual will be the Gita. The Gita is like a case study. The Upanishads are like a text book; Gita tells you how to apply the principles of Upanishads and Vedanta in real life. If that case study does not appeal to businesses which one will? I found that it is very compelling to speak to corporates with the evidence that the Gita not only has the power to create an Indian knowledge system, it can explain how the Indian business system runs the way it does, why Indian businesses can cope with the imponderables and uncertainty much better. Foreigners are amazed at the chaos here, but there is order in chaos. But, apparently, there is no chaos, there is a cosmos out there which lies just below the threshold of chaos and that order lends itself to depth of intelligence. So, instead of going out there and borrowing from shallow Western manuals we can go deep into our own knowledge systems.
With all the turmoil and scams in the corporate world, can B-schools inculcate values and ethics in B-school to your students?
The first point of ethics and values is that they are very subtle in nature. They don’t lend themselves to just teaching and talking like you teach time management or operations research. It is a different category, it’s very layered. So, ethics and values are caught rather than taught. They have to be built into the DNA of the organisation.
What are the attributes, according to you, that a CEO needs in today’s world?
A CEO needs wilderness skills; how do you deal with wide variations in data, in market fluctuations, you need a mental capability that has to seek out coherent patterns from a swarm of data, the ability to connect the dots and take decisive action, you need a certain equipoise, an equilibrium, a certain calmness of mind. That is missing in many CEOs. You need to know how to process your emotions.
CEOs also need an ecological sensitivity, which was not needed before. There are so many environmental factors buffeting businesses, that you cannot become ecologically vulnerable. Today, if you look at McDonald’s, they advertise their supply chain rather than their products. Sustainability is a function of being ecologically sensitive. GE has changed 180 degrees from the time of Jack Welch; in India, ITC is talking about responsible luxury. All this is pointing towards a change in mindset about the context of business. It is no longer about shareholders, it is the large societal factors impacting businesses. We need a bigger vision for business today.
Today you can’t bribe a Government servant and get away with it, there is the civil society which you have to contend with, there is the judiciary, there are environmental hawks who are scanning your carbon footprint. It’s difficult to be a business leader today, it’s much more challenging.
Source: The Hindu Business Line, December 7, 2012
GMAT Council plans to attract more aspirants
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which conducts the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), wants to increase its base of test takers in India by attracting undergraduate students to appear for the examination. Traditionally, GMAT, a standardised test to help business schools select qualified applicants, has been popular with candidates with more than four years of work experience, and undergraduates have largely kept away from taking GMAT.
“Undergraduates typically do not write the GMAT in large numbers. If they write the exam, they do so for banking the score—which is valid for five years. We are trying to inform them they can go for a masters programme right after graduation. We are trying to broaden the perspective of the audience, and thus working with undergraduates,” said Ashish Bhardwaj, Regional Director, South Asia, GMAC.
Bhardwaj says over the last decade, most of the top business schools internationally have launched masters programme in various streams, including management, accounting, financial accounting, telecom management, health care, hospitality, etc. This one year masters programme prepares one for a functional job.
“This particular set up of offering enjoys a very limited awareness in India. Therefore, we think we can make more information flow to candidates and inform their choices by telling them that they can straight away go for a masters programme after graduation,” says Bhardwaj.
GMAC has so far worked with around 16 undergraduate colleges, and the council says the response has been good. Another focus area for the council, says Bhardwaj, is to get more women candidates to take GMAT. In India, only 26 per cent GMAT takers are women, whereas in China, it is 58 per cent. GMAC wishes to take the number of Indian woman test takers to around 40 per cent in the next five years.
“We think women are very important. We are struggling to find out how to get more women in India to take GMAT. We are looking at ways on how to reach out to women. One way is to go to women only undergraduate college,” says Bhardwaj.
With nearly 80 per cent of Indians preferring an MBA education, an important test taker group for GMAC are candidates from the non-traditional undergraduate background, like lawyers, doctors, ex-defence officers, etc. The council says it is looking at ways to create more diversity in a class. “Not just business schools, but recruiters too want more diversity,” says Bhardwaj.
After the US and China, India is the third biggest market for GMAT. The council says it sees the most dramatic growth for itself in the Asian region. “Asia is clearly going to be a growth area for us in the near future. Given the demographic dividend in the region and the growth of management education, we see the growth continuing for us,” added Bhardwaj.
GMAT exam volume for the 2012 testing year (July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012), was up 11 per cent from the previous year. This was also eight per cent higher than the previous record of 265,613 in 2009.
Chinese test takers, the second-largest citizenship group after the US, represented 20 per cent of global testing. In 2012, the number of exams taken by Chinese citizens increased 45 per cent to 58,196 exams. Indian citizens, the third-largest citizenship group, took 30,213 GMAT exams, a figure that increased 19 per cent in 2012.
GMAC’s India office looks at the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) market. Within this area, India alone is 96 per cent of the market. “So, it’s needless to say our time will go in developing the India market,” says Bhardwaj. Around 175 programmes in India accept GMAT. The Council is focusing only on top 200 business schools in India.
With an investment of over $4 million in the India market so far, the Council is also looking at opening a few more new test centres in the country.
Source: Business Standard, October 4, 2012
HBS students to study Sreedharan’s ethic
On a wall behind his desk were Sanskrit quotations on the power of knowledge. Verses from the Bhagavad Gita were included in bulletins and newsletters released by the company he led. The man in question may sound like an archetypal, somewhat religious, Indian civil servant. He also ran a project that in phase I alone cost Rs.100 billion and involved building a Metro railway network in India’s Capital, successfully battling politics, cynicism and vested interests.
How E. Sreedharan, former Managing Director of Delhi Metro Rail Corp. Ltd (DMRC), built a world-class mass transit system is now a Harvard Business School (HBS) case study. The case study will teach students of HBS’s advanced management programme Sreedharan’s crisis-management methods and how he got a variety of people with often opposing interests to get behind his agenda. HBS is planning to teach the course, largely attended by chief executives and board-level candidates, in the September-October session.
It will examine how Sreedharan and his team dealt with two accidents during construction in eight months in 2008-09 that led to fatalities and could have irretrievably damaged the Metro’s reputation. The study also examines DMRC’s unique structure and management ethic that enabled it to meet deadlines and budget limits.
“I was looking for a good case on project management. The fact that the Delhi Metro came in under budget and ahead of schedule caught my eye,” said V.G. Narayanan, Thomas D. Casserly, Jr professor of business administration unit head, accounting and management at HBS. He worked on the case study with Saloni Chaturvedi, researcher at HBS India Research Center. “I wanted to understand how DMRC accomplished this,” Narayanan said.
The process included a meeting with Sreedharan in 2011 and many meetings and conference calls with senior DMRC officials. The 65 km-long first phase of the Delhi Metro, of which 13 km was underground, was built in seven years and three months, less than the scheduled 10 years. By contrast, Kolkata, the only other Indian city to have a Metro at the time, took 23 years to build a 25 km line.
The Delhi Metro’s construction began in October 1998, with public services starting on 24 December 2002 on an 8.3 km stretch. It has finished 190 km of track so far. With the second phase of the construction complete, six operational lines (including the Airport Express line) and 142 stations, the current third phase of expansion is set to add another 108 km of track, three new lines and 92 more stations at an estimated cost of Rs. 300 billion.
The HBS study will run students through DMRC’s gruelling initial years that were fraught with challenges. From putting the basic organizational structure in place and building technical capabilities, there were several battles to be won that included deciding on the kind of gauge to be used, putting legal cover in place, land acquisition, and realignment and tunnelling issues.
“How does a leader inspire an organization when he/she cannot buy performance by just paying more in the form of bonuses and incentives? How does a leader respond to a crisis? We hope to explore these issues in class,” Narayanan said. Sreedharan had a consistent message and others around him absorbed his values, helping DMRC make quick decisions, Narayanan said. And by being thoughtful and considerate, he got the public on his side. “The perfect alignment of his key constituents, it seems to me, is the key to his efficiency,” Narayanan said.
Abhaya Agarwal, executive director (infrastructure and public-private partnership) at Ernst and Young, said Sreedharan’s unique combination of management skills and technical ability gave DMRC the edge. Much of his technical learning was picked up during an immensely challenging stint at Konkan Railway, connecting Mumbai to the south along the west coast of India.
“The Delhi Metro, for critics who panned the Metro rail system for being too expensive, is a great precedent that showed that a project of such scale can be achieved. The good part is Sreedharan has created a structure with such processes in place that can be followed to complete the remaining project,” said Agarwal. Sreedharan retired on 31 December, with Mangu Singh becoming the new DMRC chief.
Last year, Bangalore joined Delhi and Kolkata as a city with its own Metro rail service, when a portion of the first phase of the network was inaugurated, about 19 months behind schedule. A 6.7 km stretch of the eastern line was opened between Byappanahalli and MG Road, covering six stations. Other forthcoming Metro projects include one in Mumbai. The first line of this is being built as an east-west corridor linking Ghatkopar and Versova, and is expected to be operational this year. Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (R-Infra) has been constructing the 11 km line, expected to cost Rs. 23.56 billion, since 2008. R-Infra has also won the contract for the 38 km second line, between Charkop and Mankhurd, but work on this line is yet to begin.
Source: Mint, June 2, 2012
After 18 years, GMAT test format set to see a change
With the introduction of a new section called “integrated reasoning”, the format of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) is about to change. The new section will replace one essay in the analytical writing assessment section of the paper with a set of 12 questions. Till now, students were required to write two essays.
After a survey identified the need for data skills, GMAT will include the new section from June 5. “While the verbal and quantitative sections will not undergo any change, one question from the Analysis Writing Assessment section will be dropped,” said Ashish Bhardwaj, a spokesperson for the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) — the body which conducts the GMAT exam.
The performance on the integrated reasoning section will not affect the total score. “This 12-question section will be scored separately on a scale of one to eight,” the spokesperson said. A worldwide survey of 740 business schools conducted by GMAC in 2009 had “highlighted the need for processing, analysing and interpreting” different types of information. “The current GMAT format has been in effect since 1994 and we believe in constant evolution,” Bhardwaj said. He said the section reflects the “new realities” of today’s business world and the way we use multiple sources of data to make sound business decisions.
The section will include four new question formats — graphic interpretation, table analysis, multiple-source reasoning and two-part analysis. The section has been designed to measure the ability to convert data from various sources and formats into relevant information to solve problems. “The survey had identified emerging data analysis skills needed to succeed in the classroom and the professional world. These were not tested in the GMAT,” said the GMAC spokesperson.
Ashutosh Singh, a candidate who recently appeared for the exam said, “The essay was graded on the basis of quality and now points will replace grades. The new changes are unlikely to make any difference to the marking of GMAT.” Kuber Sharma, who scored 780 in GMAT last year, said the scrapping of the essay was a good thing as it delayed results. “Everything else is multiple choice but an essay has to be read and graded, which takes time,” he said. He said the essays were redundant as there were 30 expected topics that most people learnt by rote before the exam.
Source: The Indian Express, June 1, 2012
‘There is a dip worldwide in MBA applications’
Peter Tufano, Dean and Professor of Finance and Andrew White, Associate Dean of Executive Education, Said Business School, University of Oxford, speak to Ruchi Chopda and Shashank Venkat of Education Times on the current trends and the future of their respective fields.
In business, both booms and busts give rise to opportunities. The current economic malaise will create opportunities for international students who are well-trained and creative. The exact form of these opportunities is not as clear. They could lie in finding new ways to channel capital across borders, starting new ventures, or simply being able to do “normal” jobs in an increasingly global world.
Have the fundamentals of financial education changed post the current economic crisis?
The fundamentals of a solid financial education have not changed markedly in the wake of the current economic crisis. A solid education should focus on tradeoffs between risk and return, appreciate how the rules of the game influence economic performance, and understand how institutional arrangements can influence incentives. Economic crisis over the last 15 years have focused attention on the extreme interconnectivity of markets, the extent to which incentives matter, and the compact between society and business. Curriculum is adjusting to these realities. For example, our Master’s of Law and Finance Programme probes how laws, regulations, institutions, incentives, and markets interact to fund governments and businesses.
How are universities across UK coping with the fall in applications vis-a-vis non-affordability of education for local students and tightening of visa norms for international students?
I can’t speak of general trends in UK higher education, but there is a dip worldwide in MBA applications. We are closely examining our programmes to ensure that best business education is delivered. The opportunities and challenges facing business are quite complex and students need education that goes beyond simple skills training. By tapping into the depth and breadth of expertise across the University, we can address these needs. For example, our Oxford 1+1 MBA Programme allows students to craft a two-year Oxford experience that combines depth of study in an area such as the environment or computing or contemporary India with the breadth of our highly ranked MBA programme.
The “Week of Action” has seen thousands of students protest against rising costs of higher education. Your views on how a middle path can be reached?
Higher education is expensive to provide. A vibrant higher education sector must continue to generate new ideas and insights in the form of research, which is also costly. There are some initiatives that can lower the cost of teaching, for example through online learning. If we want to make education available more broadly, we need to borrow-either in the form of government funding, or through government or private fellowships or loans-all of which would be repaid in various ways through a more educated and productive workforce.
According to a recent survey by Times Higher Education, Asian universities are increasingly challenging the domination of US and UK. What according to you are the reasons for this?
Higher education is increasingly becoming global. For example, international students comprise over 90% of Oxford’s MBA programme. This diverse class enriches the student experience. But this trend also means that students from US or UK will look elsewhere to study. At the same time, the growth of the Indian and Chinese economies creates great demands for business training and domestic schools. They have created excellent programmes to meet this demand. This suggests that rankings will be much more fluid than in the past. For business education as a whole, this is a largely positive trend-competition will force us all to work harder.
Source: The Times of India (Education Times), April 30, 2012
Indian School of Business signs MoU with IBA in Karachi
The Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Karachi to provide executive education in Pakistan. The collaboration brings together the Centre for Executive Education (CEE) at ISB, one of the largest executive education providers in Asia and IBA, the oldest business school outside North America, to provide executive education courses to senior management executives looking to fast track their careers.
The MoU was signed by Deepak Chandra, Deputy Dean, ISB and Dr Ishrat Husain, Dean and Director, IBA, Karachi, at the ISB campus. Deepak Chandra said in a release, “We are confident that this partnership will help generate tremendous opportunities for cross-collaboration between the two schools and sets the tone for many more future associations aimed at nurturing business leaders and entrepreneurs who would contribute to the growth of business and industry in Pakistan.”
The course offerings will include ‘open programmes’ or short-duration programmes that are driven by research, ‘custom-designed programmes’ or specialised courses devised to cater to specific needs of a particular organisation as well as workshops and seminars. For starters, the proposed programmes would focus on family business, entrepreneurship, business leadership, strategy and related domains. This would later be expanded to include programmes on Public Private Partnership (PPP) as well.
While ISB will focus on the design and delivery of the programmes, IBA will be responsible for their marketing and promotion. The programmes will be conducted by ISB’s faculty. The first programme is slated to commence in June, 2012.
Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 13, 2012
Ivey ties up with MDI Gurgaon
The Richard Ivey School of Business (Ivey) is expanding its footprint in India through its partnerships in areas of case study preparation, research and executive education. The Richard Ivey School of Business today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, for development of India-focussed business case studies and distribute them globally. Further, Ivey will also be developing an executive development programme for a large Indian telecom player.
The partnership with MDI will look at training high-potential faculty and case writers in case writing and case teaching process, developing a case writing and case teaching culture in Indian management schools, and expandiIn an interview with Business Standard, Carol Stephenson, Dean, Richard Ivey School of Business, said, “We are partnering with MDI Gurgaon to develop joint cases. I believe that case based learning is a highly effective and relevant teaching methodology to make management education more attuned to real world business challenges, particularly in fast-growing and emerging economies such as India.”
Ivey has a partnership with Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, for research and Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, for developing case studies. The recent MoU is a step in that direction. At the Ivey campus in Toronto, around 10 per cent of students in its MBA programme are Indians. “We have been associated with India for a long time. The number of Indian students in our campuses is also increasing, especially after our alumni, an Indian businessman in Canada has announced 50 per cent scholarships for Indian students,” informed Stephenson.
She also said that the Indian students at Ivey, Toronto campus, were looking at coming back to India. “India has the opportunities — entrepreneurial and otherwise. That is why our students are looking at the country more than ever before. Moreover, our mandatory international business trip to India, as a part of the curriculum, is raising awareness among the students about the country, encouraging them to take up jobs here,” opined the Dean. In terms of executive education, Ivey has been working with several corporates for their internal programmes. Ivey has already worked with GAIL for the latter executive development programme. “Executive education has been our forte. We are thus looking at more partnerships with Indian corporates in this area,” said Stephenson.
The Dean said that the quality brought to executive education was of prime importance. Using its own faculty, unique case method, implementable solutions and getting industry practitioners to the executive education programme has been the focus of Ivey, according to her. “Companies are now realising that they cannot compromise with executive education. Talent is what makes a company and we hope to play a significant role in nurturing this talent among Indian organisations,” she concluded.
Source: Business Standard, February 23, 2012
B-School Applicants Getting Younger, Pickier Over Time
The number of test takers taking the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) today are younger than their counterparts five years ago, and are increasingly turning their sights to graduate masters programs in management and finance, over the traditional MBA, according to a report released today by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the group that administers the GMAT exam.
“The GMAT pipeline as it relates to prospective MBA students is almost entirely different today than it used to be,” said Alex Chisholm, GMAT’s senior manager of statistical analysis.” While it might be one exam, I think it is increasingly reflecting two distinct pipelines in management education today, both the MBA programs and specialized masters programs.”
As the global management education landscape has shifted over the last five years, so has the profile of those taking the GMAT exam, the standardized test used by graduate business programs. Over the last five years, the number of GMAT exams taken has grown by 18 percent, with 263,979 examinees taking the test in 2011. The vast majority of growth occurred outside of the U.S., according to GMAC’s 2011 World Geographic Trend Report for GMAT Examinees.
The primary study destination for the majority of examinees remains the U.S. but the overall proportion of people sending GMAT reports to U.S. schools is declining. Only 77 percent of score reports sent last year were directed towards U.S. schools, down from 83 percent four years ago, GMAC said. That shift has been more pronounced in some regions of the world, like Central and South Asia, where last year only 55 percent of those who took the GMAT sent their scores to U.S. schools, down from 67 percent five years ago.
“We’ve seen a lot of schools around the world start to use the GMAT in the admissions process, so they now have more options closer to home and are exercising that ability to send scores locally,” Chisholm said.
All of the regions surveyed in the report had more test takers in 2011 than in 2007, with the exception of the U.S., where the number of people taking the GMAT “now sits near the pre-recessionary levels” of five years ago, GMAC said. In the last five years, Europe has edged ahead of Canada as the second leading destination for GMAT scores after the U.S., while Hong Kong jumped from ninth to seventh place over the same period.
Last year, non-U.S. citizens took the majority, or 55 percent, of GMAT exams, which GMAC said is the “highest proportion on record”. The first year this group made up the majority of examinees was in 2009, and that number has continued its climb upwards since then. Said Chisholm: “It is a pretty big shift.”
Much of the growth in GMAT test volume is being driven by examinees from East and Southeast Asia, especially China, which represents 70 percent of testing volume in the region, Chisholm said. In East and Southeast Asia, just 40 percent of test takers sent their scores to an MBA program in 2011, down from 64 percent five years ago, the “lowest level of any world region” in the report, GMAC said. At the same time, the proportion of examinees younger than 25 soared during that same period, jumping from 32 percent to 61 percent.
Many of these test takers are young women under the age of 25 flocking overseas to accounting and finance programs, hoping to get an edge in Asia’s burgeoning job market, Chisholm said. This demographic age shift may not be quite as pronounced in other parts of the world, but it is evident across the board. The proportion of exams worldwide taken by men and women younger than 25 has increased from 37 percent to 44 percent over the last five years, according to the report.
Another important but subtle change is the number of women taking the exam, which was 41.4 percent in 2011, the highest number ever, the report said. Chisholm said he expects this number will continue to inch upwards, especially as more women seek out specialized masters degree programs in the coming years.
Source: The Economic Times, February 21, 2012
IIT-Delhi graduate to head Cornell’s business school
Nitin Nohria (Harvard B-School), Dipak Jain (Kellogg, INSEAD)… The world’s top B-schools increasingly seem to prefer Indian-origin heads. Now, add another name – Soumitra Dutta, new dean of Cornell University’s management school. The 48-year old IIT-Delhi alumnus will be the first Indian-origin dean at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management when he takes over on July 1.
A professor of business and technology and founder and faculty director of a new-media and technology innovation lab at INSEAD’s French campus, Soumitra Dutta was one of two finalists at the end of a long search process that began in August last year. He will be the first dean at a top American business school from outside the US. “Professor Dutta’s appointment is a natural fit with Johnson’s increasingly global outlook,” said David Skorton, President of Cornell University.
Born in Chandigarh to an Indian Air Force doctor, Soumitra’s first idea of home, the one address you go back to everyday for years, came at the age of 26 when he moved to Fountainbleu, an hour and a half from Paris, as an assistant professor at INSEAD. After the 22-year-stint there, he has neither the famous European indifference, nor a Western accent. “I strongly hold on to two things that I brought with me from India: respecting diversity and the importance of family values,” he says. An alumnus of IIT-Delhi from the class of 1985, he completed his BTech in electrical engineering & computer science with a proud second rank.
Soumitra’s first school was a tiny one in Jorhat, Assam, and the nature of his father’s job took him to various places. What did not change was his academic record. “He never moved from the first rank,” his mother Tara Dutta told this paper. In fact, his dad realised pretty early that Soumitra was a bright child and stopped teaching him. “He would ask very tough questions I had no answers for,” says retired Air Marshal R K Dutta.
Young Soumitra was no bookworm though, his other passions including bodybuilding and table-tennis. After passing out of IIT-Delhi, he completed his MS in Computer Science, MS in Business Administration and PhD in Computer Science from the University of California-Berkeley. Dutta, who has published 20 books and monographs, is credited with publishing the Global Information Technology Report (co-published with the World Economic Forum) and the Global Innovation Index (co-published with the World Intellectual Property Organization). He is also seen as an authority on emerging markets having done intense research around the Latin American, Chinese and Indian markets.
Nils Fonstad, an assistant director at INSEAD’s E-lab, fondly describes Dutta and Lourdes as the most welcoming couple in Fountainbleu. “They celebrated Diwali and then brought in the New Year in a very traditional French way by celebrating La Galette de Rois. They invited the whole community to their home. They are extremely generous.” Another IIT-Delhi almunus Prof Harbir Singh, Vice Dean, Global Initiatives, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, said, “This appointment is a reflection of the great interest that business schools have in leaders who have had diverse international experience. I have known Soumitra for many years, and his prior background is perfect for this leadership role.”
Spencer Stuart was appointed by Cornell to hire the dean with a 12-person search committee comprising alumni, students and administrators. “The selection process for this kind of appointment is extremely intense and very systematic and most of the times tougher than corporate hiring,” said R Suresh from Staton Chase, a global executive search firm. Another Indian-origin academician Bala Balachandran, faculty at the Kellogg School of Management, described Dutta as a fantastic teacher.
Source: The Times of India, January 12, 2012
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