Click your way to an online MBA!

MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) are fast becoming popular in India. India is the second biggest market for MOOCs, after United States. MyBskool.com is a Chennai-based startup that is pioneering the MOOCs concept in India. Latha Venkitachalam, Chief Operating Officer, myBskool.com talks about the company and shares her insights on India’s burgeoning e-learning landscape.

Debeshi: Can you tell us more about myBskool?

Latha: myBskool.com is a 3 year young startup based out of Chennai, started in October 2010 that is pioneering the MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) concept in India. In lines with the MOOCs initiatives of Stanford and Harvard that has revolutionized the higher education eco-system worldwide by attracting millions of students from across the globe.

Debeshi: What are your company’s e-learning offerings?

Latha Venkitachalam

Latha: myBskool offers online management courses to students. Early this year, we launched a free 100-day Mini MBA in partnership with Madras Management Association (MMA) with content co-created with Indian Institute of Management Ranchi. The programme was offered on a portable classroom model with access from PC, tablets and smartphones. We got a fabulous response from the student community. Over three lakh students have registered for this course, thereby making us India's largest online business school.

Debeshi: What are the programmes that you offer in collaboration with other schools?

Latha: We have the Online Mini MBA in partnership with Madras Management Association and content co-created with IIM Ranchi. We offer an Executive Diploma in Business Administration from Mahatma Gandhi University. Then, there is an Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management from IMT Ghaziabad and Short Term Certificate programmes in partnership with MMA and IIM Ranchi.

Debeshi: Your insights into India’s e-learning industry in higher education

Latha: E-learning is the most convenient option for individuals who cannot take a break from work and continue education. This is also a great opportunity to be updated on the subject and keep in touch with the ongoing trends. Moreover, it is the easiest and cost-effective mode of learning.

Debeshi: What are some of the bottlenecks faced by companies in this space?

Latha: Education is linked to employment and recognition of online courses in the employment market is a challenge. Online learning is not accredited by Government bodies. Also, the Internet penetration in our country has not been that fast. People do not want to pay for certification and there is an attitude that anything that comes via the Internet has to be free.

Debeshi: What are your growth plans in the next five years?

Latha: We want to increase our collaborations with foreign universities in areas such as faculty exchange. We are also looking at expanding into verticals such as IT and Healthcare. We want to be known as India’s best online learning company.

Demand for Management Education Up From 2011: GMAC survey

Demand for graduate business and management education around the world shows signs of renewed growth, as 51 percent of programs surveyed by the Graduate Management Admission Council report more applications than last year.

Overall demand — as revealed in the 2012 Application Trends Survey — is spread among a greater variety of program types, including part-time self-paced, flexible, and online distance MBAs, as well as specialized master’s degrees in business, including information technology management. 

“As the global business space continues to become more complex, there is a greater demand that business schools today offer specialized and flexible programs to meet corporate and student needs,” said David Wilson, GMAC president and CEO. “Worldwide, these diverse graduate management programs are drawing different kinds of students.  Technology is a part of the solution to this challenge, but it is not the entire solution.  Flexibility in delivery mode, cadence of the program and the characteristics of the class cohort are now all variables in the graduate education solutions being offered.  The message students and companies are sending is clear; one size does not necessarily fit all.”

The annual survey, which charts year-to-year application changes at the program level, shows that specialized master’s programs in management, finance, and accounting continue to show robust growth, and applications to full-time two-year MBA programs appear to be stabilizing globally, with about half of all full-time two-year MBA programs showing increases or holding steady from last year.  

In open-ended comments, admissions professionals responding to the survey noted that economic conditions continued to play a role in student demand for programs. “[A student’s] reluctance to leave full-time position,” cited one admissions professional from a US full-time two-year MBA program. “The economy is picking up and students are finding full-time jobs or have received promotions and do not want to leave to go back to school for two years,” said another. 

A record 744 programs from 359 business schools in 46 countries participated in the survey this year. They include 527 MBA programs, 24 business doctoral programs (PhD/DBA) and 193 specialized masters programs. This year’s survey report includes, for the first time, results for masters in information technology management and masters of marketing/communications.

The rise of the one-year MBA in India

Tarun Mehra, an analyst at a Gurgaon-based knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) firm, wanted a management qualification that would add a competitive edge to his resume and help him move up the professional ladder. As his academic credentials were impressive, Mehra could easily have taken his pick from any of the top business schools within India. Instead he enrolled for a one-year MBA at local business school, SOIL (School of Inspired Leadership).

“I did not want to spend two years studying for an MBA so I chose a one-year program. This is value for money. I am not paying for that extra year, yet the course curriculum is the same.”

In the words of Bala V Balachandran, founder and dean of Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM) in Chennai, “the monetary value of time, or opportunity cost, is more important than the time value of money.”

In a bid to cater to professionals who do not want to devote two years of their work life to earn an MBA, an increasing number of business schools have started offering one-year accelerated, full-time courses. The one-year program, popularized by business schools in Europe as an alternative to the predominantly two-year US-style MBA.

Says Bani Wadhwa, an HR manager in Chennai, “I wanted to take up an MBA program but did not have the time or the inclination to do a two-year. So I opted for a shorter, one-year at GLIM. The course content was the same, only shorter. What’s more, my company sponsored me, so it all worked out well in the long term.”

Professor S Sriram, executive director, Great Lakes Institute of Management explains: “People increasingly feel pressured for time these days. For working people, taking two years out proves to be expensive and difficult. If one can get the same value in one year, why not?”

Management experience matters

Schools such as GLIM, the Indian School of Business, SOIL, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) among others offer the one-year program with a focus on applicants with at least a couple of years of work experience. In fact, it was the Indian School of Business that pioneered the one-year format in India, an experiment that turned out hugely successful for the business school.

One-year programs teach students to analyze situations quickly, think on their feet and apply their skills to real business situations. Students learn to combine their industry expertise with the fundamentals of management that are acquired over the year. Career interruptions are minimized for students while companies encourage promising employees to prepare for leadership roles. One-year programs have a great advantage over the two-year model because of the tremendous savings in opportunity costs.

It is an ideal platform to recharge before returning to the corporate world. Typically, a one-year MBA can cost anything between Rs 750,000 and Rs 1,700,000 (US$15,000 and $34,000) depending on the school.

“One year programs are fast track courses with shorter duration terms. You need to have students who have exposure to how things work in real life. So typically, one year MBAs admit students with work experience,” explains Sriram.

The average experience of the current batch at GLIM is around four years. According to Sriram, these students are also very clear about the kind of industry and job they look for post MBA, which is not usually the case for students with little or no work experience, who are more open and less focused in terms of career choices.

The one-year full-time postgraduate program in management (PGPM) at GLIM helps students understand the interactions between the various functional areas of a business system and thereby appreciate the need for developing cross-functional perspectives in business. The intensive program demands students with a proven record of academic brilliance along with an ability to demonstrate vision, initiative, leadership and hard work.

“The one-year program at SPJIMR is different from the traditional two-year model on the following counts. The participants are more experienced, have a clear idea about what kind of job they want to have after their MBA in terms of role and the industry, have reached a stage in their career where they are ready to manage people besides managing issues which was their sole concern in their pre MBA career,” says Dr M L Shrikant, honorary dean at SPJIMR.

Shrikant adds that another group of applicants for one-year programs includes individuals who would have worked on pursuing an MBA program earlier and have realized the importance of a formal degree for career growth and also may have acquired financial strength to do the same.

“In fact, given the opportunity cost of having to give up a job to do the MBA, the one year students are also much more hardworking, focused and serious about utilizing every minute of their stay at the institute,” notes Professor Sriram.

Specialized MBA course content

The fact that the course is of a shorter duration does not mean that the curriculum is more difficult or not extensive enough. The course has been tailored to meet the needs of business and industry. For instance, the post-graduate program in management (PGPM) offered by SPJIMR is an 11-month, full-time course. The SPJIMR program is an intensive course that has been designed to meet specific skill requirements of industry.

The ISB’s program has been ranked 13th in the Global MBA Rankings 2011 released by the Financial Times. It also recorded the highest salary percentage increase among all the top 100 schools. During the last four year period, ISB’s class size grew by over 35% to a current size of 570 students.

Despite these statistics, there are some aspirants who are clearly not bitten by the one-year bug.

Take Mani Sharma, a digital marketing professional from New Delhi for instance. “I don’t want to take up a one-year MBA program as these are more expensive and without company sponsorship, do not make economic sense. One-year works for students who have a background in business or a company sponsorship. Also, one-year programs do not allow students time to network or intern with companies. In the long-term, these are valuable experiences and help in professional development.”

Be that as it may, with the growing popularity of the one-year format in India, it is likely there will be an increase in the number of business schools switching over from traditional two-year MBA program formats to offer this shorter route to professional development.

Source: Published in TopMBA