Monday, October 29, 2007

IIM-B to offer more executive MBAs

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The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore may soon add more executive management programmes to its already existing list. Also in the offing is an international programme called Advanced Leadership Programme (ALP), which will be jointly offered by IIMB with INSEAD-Singapore campus, Lancaster-UK, and McGill-Canada.

Speaking about the new initiatives, Prakash G Apte, director, IIM-B said: “We are planning some more executive MBA programmes for 2008 which will be partly delivered through the distance education mode and partly through a regular campus.” About the international ALP programme, he said that the programme is built around the fact that working executives need to stop and reflect about their growth and how to use their experiences to upgrade their skills. “With three international B-schools involved in its delivery, it makes it an international programme,” said Apte.

The director also informed that the B-school is working on a postgraduate programme in software, commencing from 2008, as well as expanding its students and faculty exchange and research work. Regarding the mushrooming of executive MBA programmes across all B-schools, Apte said that since there is an increase in demand for skill up-gradation in every sector, the demand for executive MBAs is rising gradually.

On quality of such programmes, Apte said: “While witnessing such growth, not all players would care for quality, but will rather focus on profit-making. This is unavoidable unless the government takes some steps to strengthen the university B-schools with good compensations for faculty and infrastructure development.”

The two private management schools doing well in India currently, according to Apte, are MDI Gurgaon and ISB Hyderabad. “The schools are doing well and setting standards for others to emulate.” On the overall education system in the country, Apte feels that a lot of targeted subsidies are necessary to develop the education system in the country. “Unless we improve access to quality school education and provide financial incentives for school education right from the village level and attract and retain teachers, the complete education system will fail,” he opines. He went on to add: “Instead of populist subsidies, we should give targeted subsidies like incentives to teachers teaching in village schools and its students.”

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