Leading institutes line up large investments to give online training.
With the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) mulling to take the Common Admission Test (CAT) online in a couple of years, MBA test-preparing institutes like Career Launcher and TIME are also preparing to get their online act together.
Career Launcher, for instance, plans to invest around Rs 3 million across its centres to provide computer terminals for its students. “CAT online means taking a test on the computer which serves questions from a local server. We are working towards equipping ourselves with training and putting our methodology in place,” says Shiva Kumar, Director, Career Launcher, an MBA-test preparing institute.
TIME, on the other hand, says it could tie-up with a network of colleges or companies like Reliance Infocom to facilitate online training for its students. “We are looking at tying up with computer training institutes or a network of colleges with computer labs at various centres to conduct computer-based training sessions,” said Jaideep Singh Chaudhary, product manager — CAT, TIME. TIME has around 169 offices across 81 cities and it trains over 50,000 students for CAT exam alone.
Online testing could allow a host of flexibilities like convenience of testing across various centers, conducting test at any time of the year in a phased-out manner over a span of 30-odd days and validity of scores beyond a year — to the IIMs admission committee and the students.
According to sources, IIMs have already invited tenders for conducting the test by parties or companies with ability to put up infrastructure that can handle the exam on such a large scale. The CAT exams could be formatted on the lines of the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) so that the scores are valid for a year or two.
Meanwhile, the IIMs are considering online CAT to counter the burgeoning number of CAT applicants each year. The numbers have moved from 90,000 aspirants to 2.3 lakh aspirants (in 2007) over a span of four years. This year the number of students to appear for CAT are expected to go up to 300,000 students. In comparison, a decade ago, the number of CAT applicants was somewhere around 35,000.
Industry players are also expecting that an online exam could reduce the number of questions. “The number of questions in CAT has been reducing constantly. In the past two years, there have been 75 questions in total. It is 45 per cent of the total number questions that came in CAT 1998. Interestingly, there are around 75 questions in GMAT which is on-line too,” adds Kumar.
Online CAT would mean that comfort with working on and reading from the computer is a must for students. Part of the practice for students will shift to the computers. “Though the fundamentals would remain the same, people could be more willing to learn through computers,” adds Kumar.
While there are concerns about security breaches to the test process, industry players say CAT online can look at BITSAT—graduate admission exams being successfully applied by BITS, Pilani.
“The BITSAT model has an outsourced partner who has built the testing engine, which generates tests based on a tagged database supplied by the authorities. For BITSAT, BITS Pilani conducts tests at designated centers over a span of 40 days. Students book the time slot when they would want to take the test.
While students who take the tests in a particular time slot would similar papers, candidates in different time slots get different papers,” says a professor from a management institute which takes CAT scores for admission. The number of students who took BITSAT last year was 90,000 and is expected to touch 1.3 lakh this year.
The good news for students, however, could be that though these institutes are looking at upgrading their infrastructure to meet the needs of online CAT, they do not plan to pass on the cost to the students, at present. The fee that these institutes charge from students varies between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 per year for tier I towns and Rs 18,000 for tier II towns.
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Showing posts with label MBA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MBA. Show all posts
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Learning the ropes WHAT THEY DON`T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL
B-school education is certainly a quantum jump over the education that one obtains at a typical arts, science, commerce or engineering college in India.
However, there are certain areas that at times get left out. These do not relate to academic inputs, including latest case studies, but to certain other points which do not get considered.
Negotiation and the zero-sum game: Lessons learnt from our elders in the art of negotiation dictate that we must win in the negotiation game, and win at any cost.
This game is frequently played out with hapless street vendors who are vanquished and exploited. It is dangerous to bring this attitude to the corporate sector, where you need partners to support you in the long run, and not the equivalent of the street vendor, who has been pushed into the red through robust and relentless negotiation.
The nuts and bolts of business: This may be a broad generalisation, but I find young B-school grads reluctant to spend their first few years learning the ropes of how a business runs.
Any opportunity to rough it out and spend some time on learning the basics of selling, financial accounting, programming, handling in-coming calls must be welcomed with certain humility.
There are hundreds of valuable lessons that one learns in the first five years of work. Even if you have had work experience, you will find it valuable to start at a grass-roots level. This helps you to have a fresh look at various aspects of a business.
Soldiering on when the chips are down: Businesses have many ups and downs and the lessons learnt in a downturn or startup are very valuable.
While turnaround stories are the stuff of many case studies, there is often not much romance when one starts working on a turnaround. These are usually stories of sweat and toil and of getting little things done with a lot of discipline, logic and self-belief.
The lessons from karma yoga: One needs to maintain and enhance self-esteem at all times, and explain the rationale behind one's action.
Work without attachment to the fruits does not mean that one is not goal-oriented, but that one does not get so obsessed with the results that everything else becomes secondary. Building the right culture is one of the greatest challenges faced by a leader today.
An MBA gets into a position of leadership very quickly. What must be the attitude of a leader, how would he approach work, success or failure, which includes his own failure, and his team's failure, are all moot points.
At a collective level and at an individual one, there is a need for a value system, a philosophy of life and attitude to work.
D Rajiv Krishnan graduated from XLRI, Jamshedpur in 1984
However, there are certain areas that at times get left out. These do not relate to academic inputs, including latest case studies, but to certain other points which do not get considered.
Negotiation and the zero-sum game: Lessons learnt from our elders in the art of negotiation dictate that we must win in the negotiation game, and win at any cost.
This game is frequently played out with hapless street vendors who are vanquished and exploited. It is dangerous to bring this attitude to the corporate sector, where you need partners to support you in the long run, and not the equivalent of the street vendor, who has been pushed into the red through robust and relentless negotiation.
The nuts and bolts of business: This may be a broad generalisation, but I find young B-school grads reluctant to spend their first few years learning the ropes of how a business runs.
Any opportunity to rough it out and spend some time on learning the basics of selling, financial accounting, programming, handling in-coming calls must be welcomed with certain humility.
There are hundreds of valuable lessons that one learns in the first five years of work. Even if you have had work experience, you will find it valuable to start at a grass-roots level. This helps you to have a fresh look at various aspects of a business.
Soldiering on when the chips are down: Businesses have many ups and downs and the lessons learnt in a downturn or startup are very valuable.
While turnaround stories are the stuff of many case studies, there is often not much romance when one starts working on a turnaround. These are usually stories of sweat and toil and of getting little things done with a lot of discipline, logic and self-belief.
The lessons from karma yoga: One needs to maintain and enhance self-esteem at all times, and explain the rationale behind one's action.
Work without attachment to the fruits does not mean that one is not goal-oriented, but that one does not get so obsessed with the results that everything else becomes secondary. Building the right culture is one of the greatest challenges faced by a leader today.
An MBA gets into a position of leadership very quickly. What must be the attitude of a leader, how would he approach work, success or failure, which includes his own failure, and his team's failure, are all moot points.
At a collective level and at an individual one, there is a need for a value system, a philosophy of life and attitude to work.
D Rajiv Krishnan graduated from XLRI, Jamshedpur in 1984
Friday, July 11, 2008
How to build teams, groom individuals
The two years I spent at IIM-Calcutta were arguably the most important and formative years of my life. From engineering to management is perhaps more than mere education or a simple branching out, as some of us wrongly assume.
It can be, and in my case, certainly was, a transformation that prepared me for the challenges that life in the corporate world throws up. While acknowledging the rigour, discipline, and breadth and width of academic knowledge that one was subjected to at this premier management school, I must also talk of what work teaches us, or more aptly, has taught me.
Starting out in office equipment sales and moving on to IT services, I have a few observations, which are worth considering, about the value of practical experience that no classroom, however well-equipped, can ever hope to offer.
You are only as good as your team: Management education and theory emphasise on execution and attention to detail. Successful managers, we were taught, are those who are able to get things done. But there is a small and yet vital difference when it comes to the practice of this theory.
How do managers achieve results at the work place? Managers and leaders get things done through others or more simply get their team members to deliver. So a leader's most critical job is to build a team comprising individuals who have their strengths and also the capability and competence to combine to work strategically and synergistically as team members to further the organisation's gains. This skill is built through live experiences at the work place.
Building a successful team: We have read about teamwork in successful global companies. The challenge here is to create our own success story. It starts with identifying the right talent. Often, the best of talent may not want to join your company and herein lies the first practical challenge for managers.
How do you motivate the prospective employee to be part of your dream? While the value of money as a motivator is often overemphasised, I think the greatest challenge is to sell the job. Can you get your people to share your dream of success?
It is also important that we don't oversell the job, the environment and the opportunities and ensure that we set the right expectations. So it probably makes sense to under-promise and over-deliver on employee engagement, just as much as we do with customer service.
It is important to remember that successful managers know that the individuals they recruit come with skills that are different from their own. Look for skill sets that are diverse and complementary to yours while recruiting subordinates. If you are a strategist, find someone who is strong on execution and so on.
Having a team in place is the first important step but there are miles to go before we deliver as a team and as an organisation. Teams that are motivated, charged and empowered will deliver even against odds and superior competition. It is the job of the leader to tell the team that each one of the team member has a role to play in the success of the company.
Often, the individual's role in the success of the company as a whole has to be reiterated and reinforced. They also need to realise that their tasks and goals, however mundane, have a larger implication in the context of the company's growth plans.
Creativity matters: Individuals have an innate capability to be creative. Organisations often do not provide an opportunity for individuals to continue to be creative, think out of the box, or offer innovative solutions. It is the duty of the manager to provide an environment where every individual can contribute with ideas.
It can be, and in my case, certainly was, a transformation that prepared me for the challenges that life in the corporate world throws up. While acknowledging the rigour, discipline, and breadth and width of academic knowledge that one was subjected to at this premier management school, I must also talk of what work teaches us, or more aptly, has taught me.
Starting out in office equipment sales and moving on to IT services, I have a few observations, which are worth considering, about the value of practical experience that no classroom, however well-equipped, can ever hope to offer.
You are only as good as your team: Management education and theory emphasise on execution and attention to detail. Successful managers, we were taught, are those who are able to get things done. But there is a small and yet vital difference when it comes to the practice of this theory.
How do managers achieve results at the work place? Managers and leaders get things done through others or more simply get their team members to deliver. So a leader's most critical job is to build a team comprising individuals who have their strengths and also the capability and competence to combine to work strategically and synergistically as team members to further the organisation's gains. This skill is built through live experiences at the work place.
Building a successful team: We have read about teamwork in successful global companies. The challenge here is to create our own success story. It starts with identifying the right talent. Often, the best of talent may not want to join your company and herein lies the first practical challenge for managers.
How do you motivate the prospective employee to be part of your dream? While the value of money as a motivator is often overemphasised, I think the greatest challenge is to sell the job. Can you get your people to share your dream of success?
It is also important that we don't oversell the job, the environment and the opportunities and ensure that we set the right expectations. So it probably makes sense to under-promise and over-deliver on employee engagement, just as much as we do with customer service.
It is important to remember that successful managers know that the individuals they recruit come with skills that are different from their own. Look for skill sets that are diverse and complementary to yours while recruiting subordinates. If you are a strategist, find someone who is strong on execution and so on.
Having a team in place is the first important step but there are miles to go before we deliver as a team and as an organisation. Teams that are motivated, charged and empowered will deliver even against odds and superior competition. It is the job of the leader to tell the team that each one of the team member has a role to play in the success of the company.
Often, the individual's role in the success of the company as a whole has to be reiterated and reinforced. They also need to realise that their tasks and goals, however mundane, have a larger implication in the context of the company's growth plans.
Creativity matters: Individuals have an innate capability to be creative. Organisations often do not provide an opportunity for individuals to continue to be creative, think out of the box, or offer innovative solutions. It is the duty of the manager to provide an environment where every individual can contribute with ideas.
EDI plans Rs 16 crore expansion
Taking a cue from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Gandhinagar-based Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) is all set to introduce two year Post Graduate Programmes (PGPs) into its curriculum.
The move is a part of the institute's expansion plans for the upcoming academic year at an investment of Rs 16 crore.
While two of these programmes including PGP for Executives (PGPX) and PGP for Corporate Entrepreneurship will be introduced for the first time at the campus, the institute has sought an All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approval to convert its one-year Post Graduate Diploma in NGO Management and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Entrepreneurship into two-year full-fledged courses.
"We are planning for an expansion at our Gandhinagar campus and will soon be inviting applications for these courses. While we have a faculty strength of 35, the institute is inducting 15 additional faculty members this year," said Dinesh Awasthi, director of EDI.
The move is a part of the institute's expansion plans for the upcoming academic year at an investment of Rs 16 crore.
While two of these programmes including PGP for Executives (PGPX) and PGP for Corporate Entrepreneurship will be introduced for the first time at the campus, the institute has sought an All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approval to convert its one-year Post Graduate Diploma in NGO Management and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Entrepreneurship into two-year full-fledged courses.
"We are planning for an expansion at our Gandhinagar campus and will soon be inviting applications for these courses. While we have a faculty strength of 35, the institute is inducting 15 additional faculty members this year," said Dinesh Awasthi, director of EDI.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Institutes, students take to dual degrees
International exposure and the opportunity to learn things not usually taught in a single institute make double degrees valuable.
A management degree is no more complete with the stamp of just one good Indian or international college on it. With recruiters preferring students with diverse education profile, quite a few institutes are offering dual-degree or double-degree programmes in collaboration with foreign institutes. The programmes allow the student to complete the first year in India and the second year at a foreign institute.
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, (IIM-A), for instance, launched its first dual-degree programme in partnership with Essec Business School, Paris, in 2006.
IIM-A has now signed up for a dual-degree programme with Italian Bocconi University and is close to doing so with University of Texas.
Academicians say the growing interest towards dual-degree programmes is not surprising. A student earns two management degrees from top management schools in the world. The exposure of both national and international markets is valuable, they add.
IIM-Lucknow (IIM-L) was one of the early readers of this trend. It launched a dual-degree programme with European School of Management (ESCP-EAP) in 2003. At least six students graduate from the programme every year.
According to Devashish Dasgupta, chairperson, Financial Aid and International Linkages at IIM-L, students are selected on the basis of academic performances in first year, potential to emerge as an ambassador for the institute and on the basis of prior international exposure.
"While top six of our students are selected for the dual degree, ESCP-EAP sends between one and three students. Students are supposed to complete three terms before the award of the degree. The biggest advantage in such partnerships is that students tend to get international exposure and learn things usually not taught in their respective institutes," said Dasgupta.
The tuition fee under such a programme is usually worked out between the two institutes, making it an attractive proposition for the student. Meritorious students can also bag full or partial scholarships for such programmes. The Institute of Business Management and Research (IBMR), a rapidly expanding business school in the country, will launch a dual-degree programme with University of Stirling, Scotland.
Lovely Professional University (LPU), Jalandhar, has tied up with the University of East London (UEL) and offers a dual-degree in computer sciences, management, biotechnology and applied sciences.
The trend has caught on in other disciplines as well. The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, has signed up for a dual-degree programme with the National University of Singapore. Likewise, The Institute of Clinical Research is offering a dual-degree programme with the Cranfield University, UK.
A management degree is no more complete with the stamp of just one good Indian or international college on it. With recruiters preferring students with diverse education profile, quite a few institutes are offering dual-degree or double-degree programmes in collaboration with foreign institutes. The programmes allow the student to complete the first year in India and the second year at a foreign institute.
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, (IIM-A), for instance, launched its first dual-degree programme in partnership with Essec Business School, Paris, in 2006.
IIM-A has now signed up for a dual-degree programme with Italian Bocconi University and is close to doing so with University of Texas.
Academicians say the growing interest towards dual-degree programmes is not surprising. A student earns two management degrees from top management schools in the world. The exposure of both national and international markets is valuable, they add.
IIM-Lucknow (IIM-L) was one of the early readers of this trend. It launched a dual-degree programme with European School of Management (ESCP-EAP) in 2003. At least six students graduate from the programme every year.
According to Devashish Dasgupta, chairperson, Financial Aid and International Linkages at IIM-L, students are selected on the basis of academic performances in first year, potential to emerge as an ambassador for the institute and on the basis of prior international exposure.
"While top six of our students are selected for the dual degree, ESCP-EAP sends between one and three students. Students are supposed to complete three terms before the award of the degree. The biggest advantage in such partnerships is that students tend to get international exposure and learn things usually not taught in their respective institutes," said Dasgupta.
The tuition fee under such a programme is usually worked out between the two institutes, making it an attractive proposition for the student. Meritorious students can also bag full or partial scholarships for such programmes. The Institute of Business Management and Research (IBMR), a rapidly expanding business school in the country, will launch a dual-degree programme with University of Stirling, Scotland.
Lovely Professional University (LPU), Jalandhar, has tied up with the University of East London (UEL) and offers a dual-degree in computer sciences, management, biotechnology and applied sciences.
The trend has caught on in other disciplines as well. The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, has signed up for a dual-degree programme with the National University of Singapore. Likewise, The Institute of Clinical Research is offering a dual-degree programme with the Cranfield University, UK.
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