One of the most significant trends sweeping the Indian management education domain is the significant importance being attached to prior work-experience of MBA candidates.

Overwhelming percentage of students at IIMs and other top-schools are candidates with some prior work experience.

In the fresh data shared by IIM-L with MBAUniverse.com, a whopping 89% of candidates admitted to the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) have some prior work experience. Significantly, just a year ago, only 50% of the batch admitted to PGP 2007-2009 were candidates with work-experience.

Informs IIM-L, “The total number of experienced students in 2007-2009 batch were 122 (50.41%) which has increased to 274 (89.25%) for 2008-2010 batch. This is an increase of around 49% in the total number of experienced students.”

As per the IIM-L batch-profile of PGP 2008-10, of the 307 students, there are only 30 female students. Last year the number stood at 14 female students. There are 24 NRI students as well. As much as 93% of the batch at IIM-L is made of students with engineering degree.

IIM-L has also admitted 5 students who have some physical disability, thereby become a more inclusive institution.

Sources : mbauniverse.com

Would-be MBA students getting ready to take the GMAT might be in for a little surprise when they show up at the testing center. In addition to all the usual security measures—including video monitoring and the computer adaptive test itself—test takers will soon be asked to submit to a new one: a biometric device that uses an infared light to capture the test-taker’s unique “palm vein pattern.”

Pearson VUE, the company that administers the GMAT for the Graduate Management Admission Council, plans to announce the new security effort tomorrow, but BusinessWeek got a sneak peak at it today.

The Fujitsu “PalmSecure” device will be rolled out next month at 16 testing centers in India and Korea for GMAT candidates. It goes live in the U.S. this fall, and when fully deployed will be used in 400 facilities in 107 countries by May 2009.

The announcement comes as the b-school world is embroiled in a cheating scandal involving the GMAT–users of a now-defunct test prep Web site, Scoretop.com, have been accused by GMAC of using it to post and access live test questions, and GMAC has said it will cancel the test scores of anyone who violated its rules.

But the new security measure is designed to stop a different kind of cheating–the use of professional test takers, or proxies, to take the exam on behalf of someone else. GMAC’s been burned by this type of cheater before. Back in 2003, it busted a half dozen people who took the GMAT for others for about $5,000 a pop. GMAC canceled 166 scores as a result, and five of the six imposters ended up at Rikers.

More : businessweek.com

A survey of 759 graduating MBAs from 11 top U.S. business schools revealed that a company’s corporate social responsibility performance is a major factor when they select whom to work for, reports BusinessGreen.

The graduates expect to make an annual salary of $103,650 from their first employer, but 97 percent said they would be willing to sacrifice up to $15,000 to work for a company with an exemplary environmental performance, ethical business conduct and good employee and stakeholder relations.

The survey was conducted by David Montgomery of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Catherine Ramus of the University of California Santa Barbara. They used an anonymous online survey to limit bias in the survey.

Source : itbusinessedge.com

Walk through the halls of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business during the school year, and along with students cramming facts for macroeconomics and operating strategy you may encounter some students stretching their bodies and doing something really unusual for business school students: relaxing.

They’re members of Chicago’s yoga club, a student group founded earlier this year by two GSB students and which last term attracted 15 to 35 regular attendees to classes in the school’s Harper Center. The classes are “time to shut your brain off,” says Jody Kirchner, one of the group’s founders.

The Chicago GSB yoga classes reflect a growing popularity of yoga in the U.S., with about 16 million Americans engaging in the practice, according to statistics released by Yoga Journal. The publication said $5.7 billion is spent annually on yoga classes and products, nearly twice as much as four years ago.
Indian Odyssey

During a school-sponsored trip to India last year, Kirchner and fellow student Doug Neal bonded over a mutual interest in yoga. Kirchner and Neal, who both had been practicing yoga for years before they met, eventually decided to start a group dedicated to the practice on campus—after Kirchner noticed that other business schools had yoga groups, but Chicago didn’t.

In midyear, Neal, a 2008 MBA graduate, and Kirchner, a rising second-year student and co-chair of the club, conducted an interest survey for the group. Of the 1,100 students attending the school, about 200 expressed interest.

Kirchner said she was surprised at the large response the survey garnered, finding that a sizable portion of the student population already practiced yoga, at least to some extent. “People I know outside of school say the same thing,” she said. “After a stressful day, it’s time they can do something easily to take their mind off their stress.”

Neal says yoga isn’t just for stress relief. “Yoga is very multifaceted, and the benefits of yoga are different for each person,” he said. “Some use it for exercise, for meditation poses, some for relaxation, some for injuries.”

AS A PhD student at Oxford University, Cleo Choong spent most of her waking hours at the lab, researching ways to help heal damaged bones with biodegradable material.

When she returned to Singapore, the bioengineering graduate wanted to market her work, but didn’t know where to start.

‘I was lacking skills in areas like finance and management,’ said Dr Choong, 29.

So, she enrolled in the executive MBA programme at at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in July 2007.

Dr Choong represents a new breed of student that the university’s Nanyang Business School is trying to attract.

Spring Singapore chairman Philip Yeo, who helms the school’s advisory board, said that many fresh graduates in science and engineering had a strong technical grounding.

However, they lacked equally important skills in other areas, such as training, managing and retaining staff, for example.

‘We want future technical people to become CEOs of start-ups,’ he said, calling MBA training a necessity, not a luxury.

More : straitstimes.com

A unique opportunity for higher education aiming to prepare future leaders of the community is coming to Pickaway County this fall.

Berger Hospital is teaming up with Ohio University in Athens to offer OU’s professional Master of Business Administration in Circleville.

“We’re constantly meeting to talk about what we might do to expand educational opportunities for the community,” Berger President Tim Colburn said. “Why an MBA program? Because health care is a business, and we need to make sure we’re building and developing future leaders.”

Berger already has a partnership with OU at its Chillicothe branch to train nurses in Circleville, and Colburn said the success of that program gave Berger an inroad for more educational offerings locally.

The program, which takes about 22 months to complete, consists of one evening a week of classroom activities held via video conference with instructors in Athens and a weekend course once every six weeks on the Athens campus.

OU has been offering the professional MBA through outreach programs for the last five years, according to Dr. Ed Yost, OU’s director of executive graduate education and development, and he said it’s been very successful preparing students for the business world.

“This program is aimed at working professionals to complete an MBA in a non-full time environment,” Yost said. “It’s designed for people that who maybe don’t have a business degree to give people a background to turn into a managerial career step.”

Yost said the course is delivered with more group projects rather than class work, and that was part of the appeal for Berger, according to Suzanne Welker, Berger’s human resources director.

“We’re excited about the synergy the group will have and think the teamwork will benefit the hospital and community,” Welker said. “Business management develops over time and we want to maximize skill development.”

Students in the program will learn about analytical decision making, which focuses on making good business decisions and professional development, including managing people and resources, teamwork and leadership, according to Yost.

He said the course also gives professionals the opportunity to meet people in other businesses and build on local networks.

More : circlevilleherald.1upmonitor.com

Prospective and current graduate business students who used a Web site to cheat on entrance examinations over the last five years could have their scores thrown out.

The exam’s publisher, the Graduate Management Admission Council, is tracking down users of Scoretop.com after winning a lawsuit to shut down the site and seize a computer hard drive containing payment information and user identifications.

Scoretop sold VIP access for $30 a month, giving users previews to current questions on the latest Graduate Management Admission Test. Some were posted by users after taking the exam.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema also ordered site operator Lei Shi to pay $2.35 million plus legal costs in a June 20 ruling in the copyright infringement lawsuit.

In court documents, GMAC cited a posting by a user who said the information offered on the site was “inestimable,” saying that he saw 10 to 12 “word by word” items and “many of the other questions felt very familiar.”

About 6,000 GMAT scores from when the Web site started in 2003 to the present are in question, GMAC spokeswoman Judy Phair said Wednesday. It’s unclear how many test-takers are involved, because they can take the test several times a year.

“We have an ethical responsibility to schools and students to say this is a secure and fair test,” Phair said. “Obviously, you’re not being fair if you have an unfair advantage.”

The council plans to match data with test-takers and cancel the scores of anyone it determines knowingly used Scoretop to cheat on the GMAT. It will also notify the schools receiving scores, and perhaps prevent them from retaking the test. Phair said she can’t offer a timetable on the process.

Shi wasn’t represented by an attorney, according to court documents. McLean, Va.-based GMAC said Shi has returned to his native China and couldn’t be reached.

More : ap.google.com

Samford University’s Brock School of Business is changing the schedule of its evening MBA program.

The graduate program - taken often by working professionals - is being revamped into two semesters that are nine weeks each with a 10-week summer semester, the school reported Thursday.

The program used to have five, nine-week terms in a year.

Under the new schedule, each course will meet for a two-hour class each week, giving students more time to study and learn the material, school officials said.

“We have retained the flexibility and convenience for working professionals through the option of attending one evening a week,” said Larry Harper, director of Graduate and Executive Education Programs at the Brock School of Business in a news release. “In addition, students can complete the degree in as little as 12 months by attending full-time or 22 months by attending part-time.”

The new curriculum covers all business functions and is designed to offer a more complete general management experience. Students also learn to exercise ethical business practices.

“Managers need comprehensive skills and sound values in order to achieve the disparate goals of their investors, customers, employees and the public at large,” said Beck A. Taylor, dean of the Brock School of Business. “At the Brock School, our charge is to help current and aspiring managers to discover solutions that meet these goals.”

The evening MBA program is the oldest in the state of Alabama and takes applications year round. Students can enter the program in January, June and August.

More : bizjournals.com

NOW that the IIMs have more or less ruled out a legal recourse against the HRD Ministry’s directive to impose a fee cut in their PGP (Post-Graduate Programmes) courses, the country’s premier business schools are busy considering various options to make up for this revenue loss.

“One of the options before us is to increase the number of Management Development Programmes (MDPs),” said Prof Prakash G. Apte, Director, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

In an exclusive interview with Business Line today, he said that the board of governors would meet in the next four days. “IIM-Bangalore will work out its finances then. We have not yet received the break-up for the planned and non-planned grants.”

But would increasing the number of management development programmes not impose a huge load on the already over-burdened professors who are handling various PG courses, executive education programmes and consultancy assignments?

(IIM-Bangalore, for instance, has about 70 professors for 700 students (400 in the PGP, 300 in the PGP in Software Management and 40 PhD students) and this year, the institute has conducted about 45 MDPs.)

Prof Apte said that they might even consider reducing the number of offerings for the students so that more staff time is available for corporate training programmes.

On whether the institute would recruit more teachers, he said: “Yes, that would be one option,” but expressed doubt about finding the right kind of talent in the industry.

But this too would require Government permission. And what about additional funds for the salaries? With the cut in allocation in this year’s Interim Budget - from Rs 79.73 crore last year to Rs 45 crore in 2004-05 - the IIMs would have to tread this path carefully.

Meanwhile, the Government is also insisting that the IIMs increase intake of students.

This might be one way of boosting their revenues, but Prof Apte said: “We can take about 40 more students, provided we have the right infrastructure like hostel rooms, mess, etc.”

An extension of the knowledge base, more than anything else, strength of will of the Indian economy in the 21 century, as it is a conscious move to a central pillar of the knowledge of the nation’s Development planning.

This was the message that resonate in every conversation in recent weeks with companies and researchers throughout India.

At the opening of the annual summit of partnership, the Confederation of Indian Industry in Kolkata invited donors mid-January, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a plan to establish a Commission of knowledge. His agenda specific to know, but Mr. Singh’s message was loud and clear: the time for Inde’s leap is here.

Economically, India is at its best post-war period. The currency reserves exceed $ 131 billion - sufficient funds for imports rose by nearly two years. And the knowledge base has been too long without continually expanded is a strength.

“Think big, bold feel about our country,” said Singh, his audience, mostly corporate India.

India is on the cutting edge of knowledge, not only before the command of the English language. The level of competence in English, without the benefits of knowledge in many areas, none other than the ability to work for low English Master.

It would not be a nation globally competitive. Japan launched its leap without much spoken English and second in the world of the economy. Thus, China.

India is now better placed than postwar Japan and China. His brain is enormous power and English is an official language by far across the country. The association represents the new generation of specialists in India with their Western counterparts in technological capacity, economy and ingenuity of each platform oratory is rare in developing countries.

It is this combination of brains and language, that India is the main meeting point for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), otherwise known as information technology capable of services (IT-ES).

With this advantage, the Indians have the brain bank working more software, keeping accounts and Back-Office, functions for Western groups.

Today, American schoolchildren Santa Barbara after Michigan and Massachusetts are learning math and science online every day by the guardians to rest in places like Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the South India. The potential of this new service line is so great that “approximately U.S. $ 10 million-$ 12 million to the economy this year.

India, the assets in emerging countries tutoring, “said the president’s career launcher, Satya Narayanan, supra, was on January 16 at national level will be put into circulation daily, The Indian Express, mental strength is its superior in comparison with competitors like the Philippines, Singapore and one in Asia - Pacific countries.

Launcher is a career 10 Online brain, that school in Massachusetts, USA. There is also some 20 years, earns $ 350 per month for a pocket money tutoring online and USA children, as tutors say that the Americans in their own curriculum is never difficult, because “we Indians are intellectually superior.”

These allegations prahlerisch it may seem. But how is beyond try to study, many American and European certificate India brain power by one against competitors in the allocation of work in India demand for high intellectual performance for the recruitment of graduates of Indian universities learning.

“The best of India is comparable to the best in the world,” says Dr. G. Prakash Apte, director of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), it was found that 200 super-brain of each year.

The support of this thesis, Pawan Kumar, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, is now President and Chief Executive Officer of software developer VMoksha Technologies, said that in the years 1980, software, state - US field and was a “person outside India, India was thought likely to produce software.”

We now but the situation has changed, America and the world are in India hit the doors of orders. This country deserves $ 12.5 billion last year, outsourcing services, with an increase of 16.5 billion dollars this year. In addition, Indian people overseas, many of them in key positions of jobs in global companies, pump $ 4 billion-$ 5 billion per year.

India brain Well, Mr. Kumar said, is reflected in the structure of the population and the number of graduates license and other specific qualifications Indian universities and institutes of higher learning.

More than 500 million Indians are under 25 years. About six million of them deserve a bachelor of science, economics or art each year and 400000 others deserve to graduate engineers. Nearly half of these graduates of engineering software specialization.

In addition, 1200 young men and women specializing in the areas of management and technology just over half a dozen institutes of engineering, technology and management, as IIMB, across the country.