Are Business Schools in India Getting Schooled by China? : MBA News

Recent news that India’s government intends to increase the availability of quality business schools in India by establishing five new IIMs stands amid growing concerns over the waning uptake among students to programs offered by second-tier institutions, with the latter posting increasingly worrying employment statistics.

Demand for the MBA qualification and for degree-holders is clearly still strong in India, as is borne out by the program’s enduring appeal among students and the number of MBA jobs reported by employers.

The problem lies instead with the relative lack of internationally recognised business schools in India, given the country’s increasing prominence in the global economy – which leads us back to the government’s IIM expansion plan.

However, an entrepreneurship professor at CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) attributes the current travails of business schools in India more to the country’s insistence to follow its own path rather than to benchmark its institutions against global standards.

Writing in The Financial Express, the CEIBS professor believes India can learn much from the Chinese example where business schools have made substantial progress in a short space of time by paying heed to global standards.

Lack of international students and faculty cited by CEIBS professor

One might argue that the CEIBS professor is speaking from a subjective position in the Chinese education market, but Dr. Rama Velamuri – an Indian citizen with links to the Indian Business School (ISB) who has taught in Europe (at IESE) as well as studied in the US (at Darden) – makes an interesting argument for the inherent weaknesses of business schools in India.

Central to these are the notable lack of international students and faculty members among their number. Indian faculty members at leading schools around the world are common, as are international students from India – so, Velamuri asks, why isn’t the reverse of this true for business schools in India?

There are six Indian schools in the current QS Global 200 Business Schools Report, all of which have less than 10% international students in their programs. Conversely, none of the six Chinese business schools featured in the report have a proportion of international students lower than 10% - with figures of about one-third the approximate average.

One third is also the number of non-Chinese ethnicity faculty members at CEIBS, according to Velamuri, something that business schools in India are nowhere near.

The CEIBS professor thinks that this can at least be partially explained by levels of foreign trade, which are more than five times higher in China, because this level of import/export trade brings with it international business opportunities and prospective international students in search of these opportunities.

However, benchmarking to a recognized global standard has been a tactic employed by Chinese schools to notable success – for instance, in forming joint-degree partnerships with schools in the US or Western Europe.

Business schools in India that are not part of a university, meanwhile, are still compelled to use the MBA and PhD-equivalent certificates, the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) and the Fellow Program in Management (FPM) – which, if the equivalency has to be explained to any employers unfamiliar with the terms, is hardly likely to attract higher levels of international students.

These points all tie into a unifying theme for Velamuri, that perhaps it’s time for India’s business schools to start measuring themselves up to their global counterparts, and indeed to learn from how other emerging markets – such as China – have enjoyed progress with a different approach.

Indeed, with weaknesses as engrained as those highlighted by Velamuri, simply setting up five new IIMs isn’t going to solve the problems afflicting India’s business education alone.