Funds to be raised from a clutch of sources, including education bonds, commercial borrowings and corporate houses.
education
Google India Offers Educational Programme for Summer Vacations
Google will release one assignment every week for four weeks.
India Is Producing Masters in Learning Deficits
Researchers have relied upon school children for evidence of learning deficits in but teachers could be vectors themselves.
State of Education in Rural India
Source: Mint
“Modern economic growth has little room for people with rudimentary skills and low education levels”
Clarion Call to Modi to Increase Funding for Science
Source: Times of India
A recent clarion call to the Union Government aimed to increase funding for science and education in the upcoming budget.
How Canada Became An Education Superpower
Source: BBC News
Canada has joined the top ranks of the world’s best education system – and its secret weapon has been fairness.
Best Countries for Education
Source: US News & World Report
Canada is ranked as the top country for education according to Best Countries Rankings.
The Business of Education Dinner
Our Canada West Chapter’s signature event takes place on Sept. 30 in Vancouver, BC at the Fairmont Waterfront hotel.
RBC President says Canadian Businesses Must Help Expand Co-op Education
Source: Globe & Mail via Academica
RBC President David McKay has contributed an op-ed to the Globe and Mail highlighting the benefits of co-op education for students and employers. McKay says that co-op education “has become a proven way to prepare students for a world in which change is accelerating and challenges are growing ever more complex.” He says that co-op exposes students to new ideas, experiences, and ways of working, while helping to create a critical bridge between employers and PSE. McKay argues that Canada is falling behind other nations when it comes to blending work and learning. He calls on employers to take the lead in stressing the importance of co-op education and increasing the depth and quality of placements.
Education Key to India’s Next Golden Age: President Pranab Mukherjee
Source: Times of India via Newswatch India| January 9, 2014
NEW DELHI: Education is what will determine how fast India joins the ranks of leading nations of the world, President Pranab Mukherjee said here Thursday.
“I believe education is the alchemy that can bring India its next golden age,” Mukherjee said in his address at the valedictory session of the 12th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, the annual gathering of the Indian diaspora.
“The success we achieve in educating our people will determine how fast India joins the ranks of leading nations of the world,” he said.
Mukherjee said that if India has to attain a growth rate of nine percent per year, as has been envisaged during the 12th Five Year Plan period, “we must put in place enabling factors, most prominent of which is education”.
He pointed out that no Indian from India has won the Nobel Prize since C.V. Raman in 1930, and said educational institutes in the country should focus more on research and development.
“I have been urging our educational institutions to invest more in research and development and to pursue greater international linkages by establishing collaborations with foreign universities and inviting the best of faculty from across the world to come and teach in our institutions,” the president said.
He said the government has prioritized higher education and supported it with increased resources, and enrolment to higher education institutions in the country has increased from 1.39 crore in 2006-07 to 2.18 crore in 2011-12.
“India has today 659 degree-awarding institutions and 33,023 colleges,” he said.
However, despite the rise in the number of higher education institutes, India has very few institutes of global standards, Mukherjee said.
“Time has now come for us to reclaim our leadership position in the world as far as higher education is concerned. Our effort to increase ‘quantity’ must be matched with commensurate efforts to improve ‘quality’,” Mukherjee said.
He said that in a world that is facing increasing constraints on natural resources, innovation was another key area India should focus on.
“China and the US are amongst the countries at the forefront of innovation with over five lakh (500,000) patent applications filed by each country in 2011,” he said.
“In contrast to this, India filed only 42,000 patent applications, which is far behind these countries. As per an international survey, only three Indian companies are amongst the world’s 100 most innovative companies.”
He called on both the industry and higher education institutes to emphasize on research.
“We have only 119 researchers in R&D per million people, as compared to 715 in China and 468 in the US. Out of the total student strength of 71,000 in NITs, there are only 4,000 PhD students. In IITs, there are only around 3,000 PhD students in the total student strength of 60,000,” the president said.
Stating that upgrading the standards of higher education in India should be accorded top priority, he said: “Overseas Indians such as all of you gathered here can play a major role in supporting and supplementing the efforts of the government to remedy this situation.”
He said the Indian economy was more resilient than most other countries.
“I am sure you have (the) confidence in the inherent resilience of our people and the dynamism of our economy which has the ability to overcome temporary downturns,” he said.
TCS Insights: President Mukherjee believes that an increased focus on innovation by the government will improve the ability of India to rank with global leaders. Countries around the world, including Canada, have invested in research and have seen their institutions climb international standings while strengthening themselves economically. India aims to achieve similar results by raising the quality of their educational institutions to meet others around the world.
Business Schools Enhance Job-Preparation Programs
Source: The Globe and Mail, Courtesy of Academica | January 2, 2014
Business schools in Canada have begun to revamp their career preparation services for students in the wake of a tougher job market, reports the Globe and Mail. The Queen’s University School of Business has added more of these services to its redesigned one-year MBA program. The school also recently changed the start date of its MBA program to January from May to create post-program opportunities for paid-internship work experience. Similarly, University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business has its 16-month MBA program students prepare for 2 recruitment seasons – one for a mandatory summer internship and the other for full-time employment after graduation. Sauder also plans to launch a new “e-portfolio” program for its 110 MBA students to market themselves using social media.
TCS Insights: Due to a rapidly changing job market, Canadian business schools are beginning to adapt. To better prepare students, institutions are making internships a requirement so graduates will not only earn a MBA but gain valuable work experience before they seek full-time employment.
Only 10% of Students Have Access to Higher Education in Country
Source: Times of India via Newswatch India | January 5, 2014
NEW DELHI: Access to education beyond higher secondary schooling is a mere 10% among the university-age population in India. This is the finding of a report “Intergenerational and Regional Differentials in Higher Education in India” authored by development economist, Abusaleh Shariff of the Delhi-based Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy and Amit Sharma, research analyst of the National Council of Applied Economic Research.
The report says that a huge disparity exists — as far as access to higher education is concerned — across gender, socio-economic religious groups and geographical regions. The skew is most marked across regions. Thus, a dalit or Muslim in south India, though from the most disadvantaged among communities, would have better access to higher education than even upper caste Hindus in many other regions. Interestingly, people living in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal — designated as the north central region — and those in northeast India have the worst access to higher education. Those in southern India and in the northern region — consisting of Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Haryana and Delhi — are relatively better placed in this regard.
In the age group 22-35 years, over 15% in the northern region and 13% in the southern region have access to higher education. In the north-central region, the number is just 10% for men and 6% for women whereas in the northeast, only 8% men and 4% women have access to higher education.
The report, brought out by the US-India Policy Institute in Washington, is based on data from the 64th round of NSSO survey 2007-08. It throws up quite a few other interesting facts. For instance, among communities, tribals and dalits fare worst with just 1.8% of them having any higher education. Muslims are almost as badly off, with just 2.1% able to go for further learning. Similarly, just 2% of the rural population is educated beyond higher secondary level, compared to 12% of the urban population and just 3% of women got a college education compared to 6% of men.
South India offers the best opportunities for socially inclusive access to higher education including technical education and education in English medium. For instance, the share of Hindu SC/ST in technical education in south India is about 22%, and the share of Muslims 25%. These were the lowest shares among all communities in south India. But this was higher than the share of most communities including Hindu OBCs and upper caste Hindus in most other regions. South India also has the highest proportion of higher education in the private sector at about 42%, followed by western India where it is 22%. The northeast has the least privatized higher education sector and is almost entirely dependent on government-run or aided institutions.
Not surprisingly, government institutions are the cheapest places to study at, with annual expenditures ranging from less than Rs 1,000 to around Rs 1,500, except in north and south India, where the average is above Rs 2,000. Both private and private-aided institutions are quite costly, making them difficult to access for the poor. With little regulation of the quality of education and cost differentials, the poor and deprived are often trapped in low quality education, the report points out. It adds that although free education is provided at school level, it is almost non-existent at higher levels.
The report also compares India’s low 10% access to higher education with China’s 22% enrolment and the 28% enrolment in the US. Since the early 1990s, China’s post-secondary enrolments grew from 5 million to 27 million, while India’s expanded from 5 million to just 13 million, says the report, while emphasizing that higher education has the potential to enhance productivity and economic value both at the individual and national levels.
“The government has to urgently address the geographical skew in the availability of higher education facilities in the two regions of north-east and north-central,” says Shariff. “The central region, comprising Chhattisgarh, MP, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha, too needs attention. There is so much talk about a Harvard in India. I say, give two hoots to Harvard. What we need are thousands of community colleges that can offer professional courses so that youngsters can improve their skills and become employable.”
TCS Insights: In regards to the ability to access a higher education, disparities are apparent across a various groups in India. Due to a lack of regulation, in terms of the quality of education provided, not being able to afford a private institution can lead to individuals earning a poorer education because of where they are from, in addition to factors such as religious beliefs and gender. It is thought that increased enrolment in higher education has been linked to both individual and national improvements.
India Confronting Multiple Challenges, Crises in Higher Education: Ansari
Source: News Track India | January, 9, 2014
Lucknow, (ANI): Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari on Thursday said that India as a nation is facing multiple challenges and crises in terms of delivery in the higher education sector, and warned that if comprehensive correctives are not initiated, the demographic dividend would be severely compromised on the employability front in the years to come.
He said that it was lamentable to note that in spite of the higher education system turning out nearly seven lakh science and engineering graduates every year,industry surveys have shown that only 25 percent of these are employable without further training.
He said comprehensive correctives had to be applied on quality covering students, faculty and teaching, research and assessment standards while delivering an annual convocation address at the University of Lucknow.
He said that any assessment of what ails “our institutions of higher education must begin with the quality of the school leavers that seek admission in them.”
“The challenge here is to modulate the very considerable quality difference between the elite higher secondary schools in the public and private sectors on the one hand and the average or below average ones on the other, a difference that is often camouflaged by the variations in marking standards by different Boards,” he said.
Ansari said that in the 21st century, the world is increasingly moving towards a knowledge economy, where industrial trade relations are being replaced by a complex system of information exchange.
“This has shifted the focus to a nation’s abilities and resources to produce and generate new knowledge that can place it on top of the global power hierarchy. Countries are now required to match the global demand for skills with appropriate supply of human resources in order to remain competitive in the global market place,” he said.
He expressed that a disturbing phenomenon is the lack of focus on research with only one per cent of the enrolled students pursuing research in various areas.
According to data for 2009, India stood eleventh in terms of number of papers published, seventeenth in terms of the number of citations, and thirty fourth in terms of number of citations per paper.
“Our research output as global share of scientific publications was a mere 3.5 per cent compared to 21 per cent of China. The total number of patent applications filed by Indians in 2010 comprised only 0.3 per cent of the total applications filed globally. The picture is no better in social sciences and humanities. In social sciences, India is 12th in ranking with 1.18 percent of global publication share compared to China’s 3rd rank and 5.14 percent share,” Ansari said.
The vice president said that given the structure of the higher education system, the attainments of these objectives would need to be a collective effort of the central and state governments.
TCS Insights: It is said that various sectors of the Indian education system is in need of corrective actions. Ansari claims that further investments in research, similar to those seen in Canada, can make India increasingly competitive in the global knowledge economy.
Rising luxury business spurs demand for niche courses
Source: Times of India
MUMBAI: With luxury companies setting up base in India, there is a growing demand for managers armed with specialized management degrees in luxury. Looking at the growth in career opportunities in luxury, leading business schools which offer management courses in luxury brand management – such as ESSEC in Paris and SDA Bocconi in Milan – are witnessing an increase in demand from markets like India.
The trend, said industry experts, is expected to grow further as luxury expands its scope in India. Looking at the potential, SDA Bocconi has started an Indian branch named MISB Bocconi in Mumbai to leverage its experience within Indian executives. Luxury, which covers a broad range of products and services such as fashion, food, arts, movies, cultural industry and hotels & tourism, is estimated to become a $15-billion industry in India by 2015.
“Indians with luxury business school degrees are sought after in India. This is because luxury is seen as a sector with a big opportunity over the next few years. It’s a noticeable trend that more Indian students are opting for MBA degrees in luxury because there is a growing demand for managers with such specialization,” said Tulika Tripathi, managing director, Michael Page, India, a specialist recruitment firm.
ESSEC business school was the first school to launch an MBA in international luxury brand management in partnership with LVMH and L’Oreal Luxe, specifically to recruit and train high-potential managers to develop their luxury business, particularly in Asia. The business school has assigned its top officials to frequently travel to Delhi and Mumbai to monitor the growth of the industry and interview prospective candidates.
“As the luxury industry grows in India, more career opportunities are becoming available. Since 2009, the programme has seen its graduates being hired by Genesis Luxury, Reliance Brands, Burberry, Gucci, Remy Cointreau, Richemont and L’Oreal Luxe. However, some Indian graduates have preferred to gain international exposure before returning home and have gone to work for companies like DFS in Hong Kong or Chalhoub in Dubai where there are multiple opportunities,” said Anthea Davis, director, corporate relations and career development, ESSEC.
At ESSEC, the MBA in international luxury brand management is a specialized programme that accommodates up to 40 students per year from 20 different nationalities. While there was only one Indian student in the programme in 2007, today there are seven.
Davis said the first recruitment needs initially came from Japan, China and Korea. Bbut in the last eight years, ESSEC has seen an increasing demand from Brazil, Russia, India and South-East Asia. The number of partner companies the programme works with and supplies talent to include luxury groups such as Richemont, Kering, Estee Lauder Group as well as single brands such as Burberry, Chanel and Zegna.
“With the luxury goods market being largely retail driven and now saturated in Europe, companies are looking to open stores in new locations and markets which are not yet developed. This generates job opportunities for graduates both in running retail operations and in the back office with an increasing number of subsidiaries being set up abroad. For example, Richemont recently opened a subsidiary in Delhi in October 2012 where one of the graduates has been hired as brand manager for Vacheron Constantin watches,” said Davis.
Bocconi, on the other hand, has an MBA class in partnership with Bulgari which was started in Rome last year. “Foreign students are increasing. In the last five years the Indian audience became the first in terms of enrolled students, getting to a percentage of 20% in MBA and executives classes,” said Stefano Caselli, vice-rector for international affairs, Universita’ Bocconi.
While there is a strong increase in demand for skilled Indian MBA graduates who are able to blend knowledge of the Indian market with an international background, Caselli said placements are going up as the Indian market is becoming more attractive and developed for luxury industry.
The London School of Business & Finance, however, has only recently introduced its luxury management programmes following good demand from all countries it operates in.
Canada to spend $10M to woo foreign students
Source: Ottawa Citizen
Tenfold increase in recent budget wins plaudits from cash-poor universities
The Canadian government is hoping to corner the market on foreign students by making a significant investment into Canada’s education brand.
The recently tabled federal budget directs $10 million over the next two years to the effort – a large increase from the funding it set aside for marketing education from 2007 to 2012, when it budgeted $1 million each year.
Efforts will focus on strengthening the “Imagine Education au/in Canada” brand, a program that aims to promote the high quality of a Canadian education to international students.
Foreign Affairs spokesman John Babcock said the extra funding is a “very positive signal,” and that the federal government will continue cooperating with the provinces to strengthen the international education strategy.
Canada is already a top destination for foreign students. According to the budget, some 239,000 students in 2010 contributed $8 billion to the economy, making them a rich vein for colleges and universities to tap.
The University of British Columbia, for instance, has almost 4,000 students from 120 different countries. Foreign students’ tuition is, on average, five times higher than what Canadian students pay.
“It’s a lot more than about economics,” said UBC president Stephen Toope. “They really bring a richness to the educational experience that all Canadian students benefit from.”
Jennifer Humphries, vice-president of membership, public policy and communications for the Canadian Bureau for International Education, said the Canadian education strategy to attract these students has several facets.
“The brand is all the things Canada does,” said Humphries, adding that immigration regulations, tourism campaigns, the schools themselves and even the Vancouver Winter Olympics are all a part of the marketing effort.
“I still think, and the government seems to agree with us, there needs to be more investment and more work on establishing a brand, because we aren’t where we need to be,” she said.
The budget also included $13 million for Mitacs Globalink, a Vancouver-based program that matches international research students with schools.
“We’re unique in being able to make sure that students are being put into labs that will be really interesting to them,” said Arvind Gupta, CEO of Mitacs Globalink. “They know that when they come to us that we will have a good project for them.”
The Imagine Education campaign has only been around a short time, so it remains to be seen how it affects recruitment.
Canada gets an ‘A’ in education, but needs to fix links between post-secondary schooling and workforce
Source: Canada Newswire
OTTAWA, March 27, 2013 – Canada’s system of education and skills remains one of the best in the world, but needs to do much better at matching what Canadians learn to evolving labour market needs.
Canada ranks second only to Finland among 16 developed countries in The Conference Board of Canada’s Education and Skills report card. As part of its overall “A” grade, Canada earns “A”s on seven of 20 indicators – including the second-highest rate of high school completion, and the top rate of college completion.
“Canada gives its students a first-rate education at the primary and secondary levels,” said Daniel Muzyka, President and CEO, The Conference Board of Canada. “Our priority must be to build on this strong foundation to make Canada more innovative, competitive, and dynamic.”
“A pressing need is to strengthen the links between high school and the post-secondary system. Within the post-secondary system, we must improve coordination among offerings, thereby creating better pathways to workplaces, jobs and careers. And Canadian employers need to step forward with increased resources for education and retraining of their workers.”
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Canada’s university completion rate is a “B” grade. In the United States, which gets an “A” grade on this indicator, people may be more motivated to compete university because of the high returns on their university investments.
Canadian university graduates get a comparatively lower payback for their educational investment, according to two new indicators. Canada gets a “B” for return on investment in post-secondary education (women), and “C” for return on investment in post-secondary education (men). On another new indicator, Canada has relatively significant gender gap in tertiary education – for every 100 women who graduate from universities and colleges, only 83 men do so.
And Canada continues to get a “C” grade for percentage of university graduates in science, math, computer science and engineering, and a “D” in the number of PhD graduates.
“Even though the number of PhD graduates has grown by three per cent annually over the past decade, we are still second-to-last among our peers on the PhD graduate rate, and our share of graduates in math, science, computer science and engineering is declining,” said Muzyka.
The Conference Board of Canada is launching a Centre on Skills and Post-Secondary Education to investigate how Canada can meet its rising skills needs through broad changes to its post-secondary system.
Canada earns an “A” grade on two other new indicators to the report card:
- the difference in reading test scores between 15-year old students in the most and least disadvantaged schools; and
- equity in learning outcomes in reading between Canadian-born students (who speak the language of the test at home) and the children of immigrants (who do not speak the language of the test at home).
The final two new indicators are the foreign student index, where Canada gets a “B” grade; and adult participation in non-formal job-related education, where Canada gets a “C” grade and ranks 10th of 15 countries.
This relatively low grade on non-formal job-related training illustrates how Canada lags in workplace skills training and lifelong education. Canadian employers’ investments in workplace training programs lag far behind European and U.S. competitors, and only a very small percentage of what they do invest—less than two per cent—goes to basic literacy skills.
How Canada Performs is a multi-year research program at The Conference Board of Canada to help leaders identify relative strengths and weaknesses in Canada’s socio-economic performance. The How Canada Performs website presents data and analysis on Canada’s performance compared to 16 peer countries in six performance categories: Economy, Innovation, Environment, Education and Skills, Health, and Society.
Education can help India’s economy: PM
Source: India Blooms
Malda, West Bengal, Mar 16 (IBNS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said without qualitative education India will not be able to maintain its economic growth rate.
“The truth is that without education we will not be able to propel the growth of our economy. Our UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government understands this well. That’s why we have to focus on education,” Singh said in his address at the foundation-laying ceremony of the Ghani Khan Choudhury Institute of Engineering and Technology in West Bengal’s Malda district.
“To fulfill India’s growing economic requirements our UPA government has given special attention to the education sector,” he said.
“Public expenditure on education have been increased from 3.3 percent to 4 percent of GDP we have. We have many new institutes for higher education, including 16 Central Universities, 7 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), 8 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), 10 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and 5 Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs).
“We launched the National Skill Development in the 12th Plan that aims to create 5 million skilled people,” Singh said.
The PM said India needs to focus on quality of higher education.
“In higher education, we are paying little attention to quality,” he said.
Canada keen on collaborative projects in India
Source: The Economic Times
KOLKATA: Canada is keen on investing in joint projects with India especially in tourism, agriculture, IT and education sectors.
At a meeting with a multi-sectoral gathering organised by Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) here today, a delegation of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), which included some senators and MPs of Canadian Parliament, said the size of trade between the two countries had grown to 5.2 billion dollars last year from 1.75 billion dollars in 2010.
“By 2015, this (trade between the two countries) is expected to touch 15 billion dollars, a target set by the Canadian Prime Minister,” Russel Hiebert, MP, said.
There was immense scope of widening ties in education and agriculture sectors between India and Canada, he said.
The opportunity in education sector lay in the fact that in India 500 million people are under 25 years of age and to cope up with the added demand of quality education it needs another 1,000 universities for which the two countries could collaborate.
There was scope of partnership between the two countries in the agriculture sector as 24 per cent of pulses consumed in India are grown in Canada.
Canada, he said, would like to offer technological collaboration in the area of exploration natural gas for which India has got abundant resources.
Highlights and Impact of the Union Budget 2013-14 on the Education sector
Quebec Ministers Lisée and Zakaïb back from mission to India
Source: Quebec Ministry of International Relations via Indian Economic Business News
Jean-François Lisée, Minister of International Relations, La Francophonie and External Trade, and Élaine Zakaïb, Minister for Industrial Policy and the Banque de développement économique du Québec, are enthusiastic about the potential for expanding economic, political, educational and cultural relations with the emerging Asian giant. They led a delegation of representatives of about 15 Québec companies and institutions. In Delhi, Jean- François Lisée met with Shashi Tharoor, former United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information and current Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development, with a view to expanding collaboration and discussing the numerous existing agreements between Québec and India in the field of higher education. He also met with Valayar Ravi, Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, who confirmed that the Québec-India social security agreement currently on the drawing board may be ready for signing this coming spring. In Mumbai, Bhopal and Delhi, the Québec participants met with national and regional players involved in the deployment of various segments of this ambitious project. All told, the Québec representatives took part in over 50 bilateral business meetings. In Gujarat, Minister Zakaïb toured the facilities of the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Co-operative Limited (IFFCO), one of the world’s leading agricultural co-ops. Élaine Zakaïb also met with IFFCO executives at the organization’s headquarters in Delhi.
PM for new approaches to address challenges in economy
Source: Economic Times via Indian Economic Business News
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh underlined the need for new approaches to address challenges in infrastructure, education, energy, water and agriculture. In his inaugural address at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas on January 8, the Prime Minister dwelt at length on the state of the economy and pointed out that despite the impressive performance and change on an enormous scale in the past two decades, India faced persisting challenges of poverty, equity, sustainability and opportunity. “Vulnerable sections of society, including our women, face enduring prejudices and continuing problems in a rapidly changing India,” he said. “Among the most positive stories out of India in recent years are the acceleration in the rate of poverty reduction, stronger growth in the poorest States and improved productivity and increased real wages in our agriculture sector. This is significant, given that 65 per cent of our population still relies on agriculture,” he noted. The country has just embarked on its 12th Five-Year Plan with the ambition to sustain an annual growth rate of 8 per cent. For this, we will require enormous resources, reforms in policies and institutions, new models of public-private partnership and community participation and innovation-driven science and technology.
India’s business schools get tough lesson in supply and demand
Source: Reuters via India Newswatch
A boom in India’s management education sector that saw the number of business schools triple to almost 4,000 over the last five years has ended as students find expensive courses are no guarantee of a well-paid job in a slowing economy.
India’s seemingly unstoppable economic rise, an aspiring middle class’ desire to stand out in a competitive job market, and a lucrative opportunity for investors fueled a bubble in business education that is now starting to deflate.
About 140 schools offering Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses are expected to close this year, as 35 percent of their places were vacant in 2011- 12, up from 15-20 percent in 2006-07, a report by ratings agency Crisil found.
“The boom which was there has gone,” said Anshul Sharma, chairman of Asma Institute of Management, which he started in 2004 in Pune, about 150 km (95 miles) from Mumbai.
“Those who entered this industry with a motive to make money are leaving because there is not much money left. Every college is working to sustain itself,” said Sharma.
There was a near four-fold rise to more than 352,000 MBA course spots in the five years to March 2012.
But the allure of so-called B-schools outside the top tier is fading as the economy grows at its slowest in nine years, with the financial sector especially sluggish, and amid questions about the quality of some schools.
Only 29 percent of graduates from Indian business schools – excluding those from the top 20 schools – get a job straight after completing their course, compared with 41 percent in 2008.
Aditya Dighe took out a 330,000 rupee loan to fund his MBA from a school in India’s financial hub of Mumbai. Four months and 18 job interviews after graduating, the 26-year-old is still looking for a job that will pay enough to cover his expenses and monthly loan instalments of 10,000 rupees.
“The B-schools have promoted their brand only on placements and by boasting about salary packages. The course is theoretical and you don’t learn the skills corporates want,” he said.
BIG BUSINESS STRUGGLES
Private education is big business in India. KPMG pegs the industry at nearly $50 billion and projects it to reach $115 billion by 2018. But growth rates are not uniform across the primary, secondary and tertiary education sectors.
“A third of all management colleges are struggling,” said Narayanan Ramaswamy, a partner at KPMG.
At the peak before the global financial crisis, new business schools were cropping up almost every day, some in remote towns where even quality secondary education is hard to come by.
There are two strands of MBA courses.
MBA degrees are offered by schools overseen by the All- India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulatory body for higher education. These schools must be affiliated to a university, have a maximum of 120 students and fees are capped by state governments.
A second stream allows colleges to offer diplomas that are not accredited by AICTE. There are no standardised curriculums, class sizes are bigger and fees can be higher. An institution can offer both accredited and non- accredited MBA courses.
In a city such as Pune, something of an education hub, it costs about 40-50 million rupees over two years to set up a management school, which can be as basic as a modest building with classrooms, a small library and a computer room.
When demand was outrunning supply, students were willing to pay high fees for the autonomous courses that tend to be more industry-relevant, in order to get a leg up in the job market.
“People who had some land and money saw a great investment opportunity in the demand-supply gap and there was a rush to open schools,” said Dhiraj Mathur, executive director at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“They were not thinking about the faculty, location, employability and brand name. They thought setting up a school would take care of the rest.”
Now, some new institutions are discontinuing their autonomous courses despite often better quality education, because with no guarantee of a job, students are opting for cheaper, AICTE-approved courses.
SPOILING THE SYSTEM
Schools with little or no track record fill seats by paying existing students up to 40,000 rupees for referring other students, Asma’s Sharma said, whereas some hire agents, paying them upwards of 50,000 rupees for every student they get.
Sharma cannot afford to pay hefty commissions and is struggling to fill the 120 seats at his institute. Last year he enrolled only 45 students, and needs about 80 to break even.
“Today, students do not ask what and how they will be taught. They only ask about placements and salary packages, and what discounts we offer on the fees,” he added.
“This is spoiling the education system but if we don’t try and accommodate them we will not be able to survive.”
Elite institutes still attract students despite high fees as they have strong reputations, and their graduates are favoured by recruiters.
As a result, competition is fierce for the relatively few places in the state-run Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ahmedabad, and the Indian School of Business (ISB), started by two former McKinsey employees in Hyderabad.
Fees at IIM in Ahmedabad are 1.55 million rupees for the two-year MBA programme. ISB, an autonomous college associated with international schools like Kellogg, Wharton and London Business School, charges 2.2 million rupees.
Online job portal MyHiringClub.com found the average starting salary for graduates of India’s top B-schools was about $32,400, about 1.8 million rupees, more than four times the average of $7,550 for other MBA graduates.
Lavina Thadani, a 23-year-old MBA graduate from Pune, settled for a low-paying job in the capital markets team at a media house after a three-month search yielded little else.
“I expected more after spending so much on my MBA,” said Thadani who took a 300,000-rupee loan to get her degree but earns only about 200,000 rupees a year. “If I had known earlier I would have never done my MBA,” she said.
TCS Insights: The lack of quality Indian institutions offering an MBA education is a concern for Indian students who pay a huge amount of money for these courses but do not receive a significant Return on Investment (ROI). Canadian business schools promoting in India will want to emphasize the advantages and ROI of their programs, as well as promote the potential for immigration through the Canadian Experience Class program for international graduates.
Canada and India build closer educational ties
UniversityWorldNews, Issue 128, 2010
India is focusing on giving their students a global experience, and a new bill being passed by the Indian Parliament would bring vast progress and easier access for international universities.
Mr. Pawan Agarwal, author of Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the future and a West Bengal Government member of staff addressed a conference in Ottawa held by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada to promote India-Canada ties in higher education. He stated that with the right foundation, appropriate student recruitment, joint research project ventures and Government support, closer ties can be achieved.
The main reason towards this collaboration is to lessen the unfamiliarity of Canadian Universities and their reputation in India. Raising awareness is critical in overseas development work. Mr Agarwal mentioned that there were about 28,000 Indian students studying in Australia in comparison to a meager 2800 in Canada. Development of offshore campuses, collaborating with Indian institutes and extensive marketing are the ways to go for establishing strong presence in India. In the lines of Virginia tech and Georgia University, US opening off shore campuses in
Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Schulich School of business, York University, Canada has already taken a step forward to offer collaborative programs with SP Jain School of Management, Mumbai, India.
According to Mr Shashishekhar Gavai, Indian High Commissioner to Canada, research collaboration was another option of consideration. He mentioned that McGill and Carleton universities are interested in setting up Canada-India centres to address the Indian immigrants in Canada.
On India’s part, India has 26,200 educational institutions with over 15 million students which is expected to grow twice as much in the next few years due to the increased growth of middle and upper classes. Mr Agarwal would like to increase the number of mature students enrolling for post graduate programs, something that Canada has been successful at. He is expecting Canada to diversify growth in areas in addition to Management and Engineering.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper hosted a roundtable discussion with 15 presidents from Indian universities. With premiers of Canadian provinces Ontario and Quebec visiting India and expressing interest in pursuing closer ties with the Indian higher education system, 15 Canadian university presidents met in India in November to make progress. India has become a global giant that without considering Indian market there is no real global experience. These programs will also provide tremendous opportunities for Indian students looking to acquire world-class management training and prepare them for global careers in India and around the world.
This Indo-Canadian collaboration will provide students a diverse international perspective and an opportunity to synthesize Western efficiency and Eastern ethos.
Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of Canada and the Government of the Replublic of India Concerning Cooperation in Higher Education
Read the Memorandum of Understanding here, signed a the G20, recognizing education as ‘an area of new momentum.’