A new scheme has been launched to help non-US students, who are experiencing problems in getting loans sanctioned at competitive rates because of the credit crunch. The scheme would be applicable for the 2009-10 academic year for students applying in 40 universities in US and Europe. Under this arrangement between the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) and the financial community, at least $500 million has been made available. Students borrowing under this sceme don't need any securities or bank guarantees. B-Schools under this scheme would not be liable for any defaults too.
Furlough schemes have risen dramatically throughout North America and Europe, with governments and corporates coming together to share the burden and avoid job losses. A furlough scheme entails a cut in working hours, with a corresponding cut in salaries. In some instances, workers are also asked to go on unpaid leave. Toyota announced a 10% cut in working hours and another 10% cut in salaries. In Europe, governments and corporates are working together to address the disastrous effects of some furlough schemes where a few corporates have announced up to a 50% cut in working hours.
University of Delhi is offering a summer undergraduate research programme (SURP) and summer out-reach programme for eight weeks, scheduled between June-July 2009. This course in Biomedical Sciences at Dr B R Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research (ACBR) is open to senior undergraduate and post graduate students. Refer to http://www. acbrdu.edu for details.
International Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR) based in Jaipur has launched PG Diploma in clinical research and pharmacovigilance. The students can pursue the courses either individually (6 months each) or combined (11 months). The last date of registration is April 11, 2009, and the course commences on April 26. The course has guaranteed paid internships starting from the 5th month, besides attractive scholarships for students.
Manipal University is giving finishing touches to a sprawling, centrally air-conditioned state-of-the-art indoor sports complex. Students will soon be able to play their favorite games like basketball, squash, badminton, lawn tennis, and beach volleyball on the campus. Its multipurpose hall will accommodate a jogging track and house a gymnasium and an aerobic centre, among many other facilities. The complex will be housed in a whopping 1,46,130 sq ft building and will become operational by August 2009.
Schulich India MBA will be among the first MBA programmes to be delivered in India, in collaboration with an international business school. This new MBA programme is an arrangement between the S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) in Mumbai, and the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada
Living up to its name, Liverpool Hope University launched a Master of Arts degree on the city's most famous sons - the Beatles quartet. Titled 'The Beatles, Popular Music and Society', the course consists of four 12-week taught modules and a dissertation. It is offered both in fulltime and part-time versions. With over 8,000 books written about The Beatles, this is one course for which students will have no problem in finding research material.
According to a survey conducted recently, nine out of ten MBA students believe that corporate focus on short-term rather than long-term results has been a contributing factor to the current global financial crisis. A meagre 2% of respondents believe they are being taught how to make business decisions that will help avert similar crises in the future. A good 56% believe that business schools should introduce financial models that take long-term social impacts into account. The survey was conducted by NetImpact a student body, in association with Aspen Institute.
In a landmark judgment, a British employment tribunal has held that denial of internship opportunities to Indian law students amounts to racial discrimination. The tribunal was dealing with a case filed by an Indian student, Ashokvardhan Purohit, for automatically rejecting his application for solicitor training, because of his nationality. It is to be noted that several law firms in UK have a blanket ban on trainees beyond the European Union. While the ruling is a welcome breather to students, its effectiveness remains to be seen as reservations have already been expressed by many European firms.
Delhi University's Institute of Lifelong Learning (ILLL) is offering a personality development course. This will be a 60-hour short-term course running on weekends. Thirty-five seats are on offer for students pursuing any graduate, postgraduate or research programme in Delhi University on first-come, first-served basis. Special emphasis is on improving their communication skills along with a training in interview preparation and stress management. University professors from the English and Psychology departments were instrumental in curriculum development. The institute is also offering a course on film studies, which was intially to be offered in all the affiliated colleges of Delhi University.
HDFC Standard Life and Manipal Education announced the launch of a three-month Certificate Programme in Insurance and Management for graduates, and even MBAs. The curriculum has been developed through the combined efforts of HDFC Standard Life and Manipal Education. It incorporates 'Disha', HDFC Standard Life's eight-step structured process, along with concepts related to insurance and sales. On completion of the programme, and post assessment, candidates will be appointed as Sales Development Managers at HDFC Standard Life. Sharad Gangal, general manager, HR, HDFC Standard Life says, "The key objective of this programme is to select, train, and groom talent from across the country to ensure a ready pool of insurance-trained sales professionals for the company." The selection process includes a written test and interviews in Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra. The course will be conducted at Manipal Education campuses in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kolkata and Mumbai. It will include a twomonth classroom session and a one-month 'on-the-job training' at various HDFC Standard Life offices. This initiative will surely help in creating a specialised talent pool of insurance professionals, which the insurance industry will require to register and sustain rapid growth rates it has achieved in previous years.
Quick off the blocks, some B-Schools have begun offering programmes for senior executives, to train them to deal with the economic downturn. Some of the courses listed on wsj.com include:
Navigating through the downturn: London Business School cost $4,200
Leading in volatile times: Haas School of Business cost $7,000
Organisational and personal resilience: Babson College cost $2,900
Implementing radical innovation: MIT Sloan cost $8,800
Leading organisational change: NYU Stern School of Business cost $2,500
Indian B-Schools also quick on the draw!
Marketing strategy in turbulent times: ISB, Hyderabad cost Rs 75,000
Managing in turbulent times: ISB, Hyderabad cost Rs 75,000
Decision making under stressful situations: XLRI, Jamshedpur Rs 19,000
Transformational leadership: XLRI, Jamshedpur cost Rs 40,000
Strategies for growth and survival: NITIE, Mumbai cost Rs 15,000/ Rs 20,000 (residential)
New Delhi's National Institute of Social Defence and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment have jointly launced a one-year postgraduate diploma course in integrated geriatric care (full-time). This is an upcoming career option for those interested in old-age healthcare. As the longevity of the population increases, the need for geriatric care would only grow.
Judge Business School (JBS) , University of Cambridge launched its Centre for India and Global Business (CIGB), to help identify India's role in the global economy. The Centre has been established to carry out research in the areas of business, around the themes of technology innovation, emerging global economies, relationship between economic development and knowledge economy, and entrepreneurship.
Amity University has announced Amity Academic Excellence Scholarships as a part of the Ritnand Balved Education Foundation's efforts to help empower future generations. All students who have scored 85% marks and above in their 10+2 boards, from any school in India, and who wish to join a top institute in India for graduation, can apply to the foundation. There are 100 schoarlships on offer valued at Rs 15,000 each.
Nirmalya Kumar and Sophie Linguri Coughlan will be the stars at Europe's most prestigious business school competition, organised by the European Case Clearing House (ECCH). The two London Business School professors are set to pick up awards for writing best cases in both strategy and marketing. But it is INSEAD, France, which won the maximum laurels. It pocketed four of the nine awards, writing the best cases in economics, ethics, finance and the best case overall. Dominant themes of the year include retail, banking and entertainment sectors, which are bearing the brunt of the slowdown.
Leading industrialists announced the launch of Gurgaon's new School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL), a leadership and management school focussing on building sustainable organisations. SOIL founder and CEO, Anil Sachdev, stated, "We have a leadership crisis globally. We have joined hands to create this institution to develop leaders who create sustainable organisations of consequence." Two programmes on HR leadership and business leadership will be on offer, targeting graduates and experienced managers, respectively. Both of them are year-long courses, with batch sizes of 60 students each. Enrolment for the first batch begins from July 2009.
Haryana Ordinance No. 4 of 2009 has allowed the setting up of Jindal Global University. This private sector university, an initiative of Navin Jindal, MP and industrialist, will come up at Sonepat, Haryana. To be built at an initial cost of Rs 300 crore, the university will ultimately have four schools on law, business, government and international affairs. The first to take off would be the law school, which sources say will open its doors for the September '09 session. School authorities confirmed that classes would begin once the institute gains the Bar Council approval.
Kuoni Academy offers a three-month intensive Tour Manager's Programme with a month-long training in Switzerland, in collaboration with International School of Tourism Management (IST). This in-depth course would focus on a range of travelrelated topics like travel geography, tourism and product knowledge, airline ticketing and documentation, customer service, language skills etc. The company also offers placement assistance. While the course fee is Rs 2 lakh approximately, the cost of international component would be on actuals. For more details visit their website www.kuoniacademy.co.in.
Anand Kumar, founder of Super 30 coaching centre, says, "The day I wasn't able to join Cambridge, I decided to do something so that deserving students don't miss out on a good education because of poverty." Having seen his own dreams shattered, Kumar set up Super 30, a unique coaching centre in Patna for students from economically weaker sections, with 30 seats on offer. His efforts have led to over 150 such students successfully gaining entry into IITs. Kumar refuses to accept grants from Non-Resident Indians and corporate bodies to help in his endeavour. There is huge competition to gain entry into Super 30 with over 3,000 applications last year. A mere 500 were called for an entrance test. Kumar set aside what he did not achieve personally to create an inspiring story. Here's hoping many more will follow his example.
WSJ.com reports that new moms in the United States are cutting down on their maternity leaves as the economy slips. MomCorps, a staffing company which helps mothers find flexible working jobs, noticed that their members have increased the number of hours they are willing to work now. This has resulted in new moms choosing to increase their work hours from their earlier average of 20-25 hours a week to 30-40 hours per week now. The traffic on their website has risen by 79% over the last year and the resume writing service is twice as busy. In an online survey of Cafemom.com, 16% of respondents said that the downturn was the reason that led them to look towards longer work hours now.
In a first, Grandes Ecoles, the pride of French University system (French equivalent to our central universities) are now switching to teaching in English. CERAM Business School is planning to teach all its programmes in English, rather than French. The only exception to the English rule will be on CERAM's Chinese campus in Suzhou, where programmes will continue to be taught in both English and Mandarin. The lure of the lucre has thumbed empty pride, for, the switch has resulted in a 30% hike in the number of applications across the programmes.
A number of foreign MBA students have seen their job offers from US financial giants vanish once these firms accepted money from the US administration's $787 billion bail-out plan. Accepting these grants/loans prohibits the firms from applying for H1-B visas for skilled immigrants, if such hiring makes the citizens of the United States redundant. In this context, the Bank of America became the first bank that withdrew 50 job offers already made to overseas MBA students studying in US universities. More than a third of the students in business schools in the US are of foreign origin. The bail-out legislation has dealt a severe blow to their dream of settling down in the US after graduation.
Beginning March 31, UK introduced a new student visa system called Tier 4 of the Points-Based System (PBS). Applicants need to score 40 points in order to qualify for a student visa - one will secure 30 points for a visa letter issued by a licensed sponsor and 10 points for showing you have enough money to cover your course fees and all living costs.
With students receiving multiple visa letters, it is difficult to keep track of where these students eventually enrol. Tier 4 will ensure that students can only use one letter to apply for the visa. If a student wants to change institutions after obtaining the visa, he or she would be required to take prior permission from the UK Border Agency (UKBA).
Chris Dix, regional director, South Asia and Gulf, UK Border Agency (UKBA) states, "Students who successfully complete a Bachelor's programme, a Master's or higher can apply for a work visa under Tier 1 (poststudy and highly skilled workers) within a year of graduating. This allows them to stay and work in the United Kingdom for another two years." Students no longer need to return to India to apply for switching their visa status.
Keeping up with the trend of developing Continuing Education Programmes, NIFT is launching a course on fashion journalism. The course aims to provide an understanding of the fundamentals of fashion, which will enable students to perfect their writing skills on fashion, be they features, reviews or interviews. Students with a graduate degree or diploma in English, Fashion or Journalism, and professionals in the fields of fashion or journalism are eligible to apply. The course is twice a week, over a duration of three months. Batch size is 20 students, at a cost of Rs 30,000. For more information contact J S Rawat (Tel 011-26542100/ 48/ 59 Fax: 011-26542151 Email: jsrawat@niftindia.com).
Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has just launched a PG diploma course in Disability Management. The programme has been developed in collaboration with the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI). In order to apply, you need to possess an MBBS degree or equivalent qualification in Ayurveda, Unani, Sidha or Homoeopathy medicine (AUSH). Preference will be given to those with two years of work experience. The course duration ranges from a minimum of one year to a maximum three years. Download forms from www. ignou.ac.in
Punjab Technical University (PTU) is set to give scholarships to rural students who have qualified their Class 10 or Class 12 exams. They would receive amounts ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 per annum from the next academic session.
Tony and Maureen Wheeler, co-founders of the Lonely Planet travel guidebooks, made a multimillion pound gift to London Business School (LBS) to endow a chair in entrepreneurship. The first person to hold the Wheeler Chair is Rajesh Chandy, a marketing professor specialising in innovation, entrepreneurship and marketing strategy, according to Financial Times. Chandy has been member of LBS faculty since 2008. Formerly, he held James D Watkins Chair in Marketing and was a co-director, Institute for Research in Marketing, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. This is the second gift LBS has received recently to fund research in entrepreneurship.
IITs are not content to rest on their laurels as the best engineering schools in the country. While social sciences and humanities have already found a very strong place within the IIT system, performing arts have been restricted to SPIC MACAY concerts and theatre groups, so far. This is all set to change. IIT Mumbai is contemplating a course in Hindustani classical music and music appreciation.
However, for IIT Kanpur, nothing less than a transformation, a la Santiniketan, will do. It is planning to introduce courses in theatre studies, dramatics and performing arts. IITs Chennai and Khargpur are yet to take a call on getting arty. These initiatives emanated out of the Yashpal Committee Report, which advocated the idea of developing IITs as 'models of all round excellence', a la the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) US. Now IITs will churn out even musicians and performing artists.
Consultancy Development Centre (CDC) has already gained a name for its unique two-year Masters programme, in collaboration with BITS, Pilani, which leads to an MS degree in Consultancy Management. CDC now goes another step forward, offering two new certificate courses in Technical Consultancy and Consultancy Skills. This three-month course (fees Rs 10,000) will be taught through contact classes on fortnightly Sundays, along with online mentoring, so that working people too can avail of the course. Fresh applications for a new batch will be accepted in June. The course will commence in July. Eligibility for each course varies, so check details on www. cdc.org.in or email cdc@vsnl.com, before applying.
Financial Times (FT) 2009 rankings of business schools heralds the arrival of Asian B-Schools at the high table. While China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) burst into the Top- 10 (8th Rank), three others, namely the Indian School of Business (15th), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (16th) and Nanyang Business School (24th) are among the Top-25. Rolf D Creamer, vice-president of CEIBS, attributes three reasons for this surge. The demand for high quality managerial talent during 80s which led to the creation of business schools, the openness of Chinese higher education systems to tie-ups, joint degrees and foreign campuses, and finally, the dynamism that the Chinese marketplace exhibits. India's ISB is the lone institution representing the country. Indian institutions, including the venerable IIMs, still have a long way to go to be counted amongst the global elite.