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IIMs plan to go global, may open doors for foreign students
The Indian Institutes of Management are planning to go global with some of them mulling the option of opening the doors of country’s premier business school for foreign students too, Manish Chandra Pandey reports.
The Indian Institutes of Management are planning to go global with some of them mulling the option of opening the doors of country’s premier business school for foreign students too.
While exploring the possibility of opening up campuses abroad, the IIMs are also considering the option of fixing at least 10 per cent seats for their flagship two years PGP course, exclusively for foreign students, specially those from neighboring countries.
"The IIM directors have informally discussed the issue and another round of meeting is due shortly," IIM-L director Professor Devi Singh told HT after the ‘CEO summit: Emerging Pillars of the Indian Economy” concluded on Sunday. The directors have also had a discussion with the HRD minister Kapil Sibal on the issue. The entry of foreign students on IIM campuses won’t be at the cost of Indians.
“If the proposal is cleared we plan to increase our seats to accommodate the excess intake. To qualify for admission to India’s best B-schools, the foreign students might be required to take a separate test, something on the lines of Graduate Management Admission Test, GMAT,” he said.
Prof Singh said as far as opening up campuses abroad was concerned, there is a suggestion that the IIMs team up together and come up with a joint campus abroad.
“It could be like couple of IIMs or even more joining hands. All these things are being discussed,” he said.
Welcoming the proposal, Ajit Balakrishnan, founder and CEO of rediff.com said, “Such things would usher in a healthy cultural exchange and would be mutually beneficial.” At IIM-L, some of the CEOs who were here also discussed the proposal of limiting CEO salaries, as advised by Union minister Salman Khurshid.
“I think more than limiting CEO salaries, effort should be made to make optimum use of CEO’s brain for the larger good of the people. Otherwise, if all the Indian CEOs combined were to cut their salaries by half, it won’t make much of a difference in a country as big as India,” said Kalpana Morparia, CEO JP Morgan.
But Ajit Balakrishnan, founder and CEO of rediff.com felt that “some people taking far too much money home” was not at all justified. “I guess in the US this debate started well before it did in India and President Obama had to actually advise CEOs to cut down their salaries,” he said.
