MBA students across geographies may be apprehensive about landing a sufficiently well-paying job after graduation, or even a job at all, but they are not the only ones worrying. Business schools across the world too are finding it challenging to pull international students in to their campuses this season. Stricter visa norms, worrying unemployment figures and increased tuition fees are making most b-schools think differently about promoting themselves to international students. PaGaLGuY spoke to a few b-schools on the sidelines of the QS World MBA Tour in Mumbai last week to understand how they were tackling the admissions problem during such a time.
With India and China being spoken of as the only emerging and healthy economies in a time of economic bad weather in Europe and America, several b-schools are downplaying the possibility of a job in a first world country after graduation to prospective students. They are instead highlighting the schools’ academic strengths, while simultaneously building networks with companies outside their countries in order to arrange job opportunities across the globe.
When students from India or other Asian countries come to inquire about our MBA, most of them seek details about jobs. We tell them that we place our students outside Spain in various other countries too,” said Eliana El Hage, Associate Director for Asia Pacific International Development, IE Business School, Spain.
Institutes like Hult International Business School which have a presence in USA, UK, UAE and China are talking about their leverage at all these locations to help students find a job. “During a shaky global economy you have more number of people coming back to school, even though funding the degree is the biggest worry. For an international student getting a job in New York may be difficult in these times but the window is open in the Middle-east and South-east Asian countries and we aid them with that too,” said Jordana Blanchet, Director, Recruiting and Marketing for South Asia at Hult.
Pranav Rathi, Deputy Manager of Recruitment at the UK-based Leeds Metropolitan University said that the education market in the UK had indeed sunk by 35%. “With tightened student visa norms, we have scraped the dissertation component out in a few courses and replaced it with internships so that students have about three more months to look for jobs,” he said. He added that even if employment opportunities were harder to get in London, Leeds was an indispensable enough brand to help land up offers in emerging economies. “Most international students are eager to work in first world nations but we sensitize them about the many multinational companies based in South-east Asian countries and other emerging economies that they will inevitably have to keep pace with them,” added Rathi.
Beyond brands and into niche learning
With the job market shifting towards a more global spread, many international b-schools have started offering new niche courses in subjects such as the Economics of Global Warming, International Sustainable Business, Public and Nonprofit Management, Localization Management, etc tailormade for opportunities in Asian economies.
After the 2009 movers and shakers of global economy, the one best thing that happened was that only those students driven by the pursuit of knowledge entered college and therefore most schools had to offer the latest solutions to the very new global problems. Those solutions were created in the form of specializations and niche electives which were never offered before,” said Dayton Hughes, an alumnus of the California-based Monterey Institute of International Studies. “Not just one country was affected, it was a chain reaction. So b-schools had to start courses which catered to understanding economies of this magnitude,” he added.
The Nanyang Technopreneurship Center of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University is doing something similar. Foo Say Wei, Deputy Director explained that its new offering called the Master of Science in Technopreneurship and Innovation Programme (MSc TIP) attempts to offer students an overview of three countries — Singapore, China and America and turn them into innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
Opportunity in a time of crisis
While Western b-schools are changing their pitches to international students, those in Asia and India are claiming to enjoy an added advantage during these times. Sachin Tipnis, Executive Director of The University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Business and Economics optimistically stated that ‘the next decade belongs to Asia’. He was of the opinion that if international students were going to work in Asia then it was better if they studied in Asian b-schools. “Even companies based in the US, Canada and other first world countries have realised that the future lies in the Asian markets and hence they have already started sponsoring their employees to study in our university for understanding the dynamics of the Asian market. Gone are the days when an MBA in finance, marketing and human resources would satisfy companies’ needs. They want Asian market analysts and consultants, he explained.
But are Asian b-schools up for it? Professor Easwar Krishna Iyer, Director of Admissions at Chennai’s Great Lakes Institute of Management however stated that although the economic conditions had forced many companies and students to look at eastern countries, the b-schools in these countries still needed a major standard upgradation. “The number of international students wanting to study in Indian b-schools is growing. However, it calls for a major quality check. Applicants no more go only for brands. This is an era wherein the economic meltdown in one country is driving change in another,” he said. Many Indian students who were earlier contemplating going abroad were now considering Indian b-schools, he added.
But is Asia really the future?
According to Prof Phanish Puranam of the London Business School (LBS), it was highly likely that Asia — in particular India and China — will be hotspots for economic opportunity for the next decade or two. “However, it does not follow that it is futile for students to study in European or North American schools, because this is where the best b-schools today are and indeed they are increasingly engaged with Asia through student exchange programmes and partnerships. In fact, I have a lot of interest from my students at LBS including those not of Indian origin to visit India for internships and company visits.” He further said that the challenge for b-schools in India and China was to rapidly improve their ability to create thought leadership through research, which could then put them ahead of European and North American schools as platforms for learning how to work in Asia.
Professor Nirmalya Kumar, also of London Business School and recently ranked 26 in the Thinkers50 list of the world’s most influential thinkers, too disagreed with the theory that if the future was Asia then studying in the West was futile or that Asian b-schools had better insights about Asia. He said, “One studies for the benefit of a lifetime and not the immediate future or the next job. The world is going global, with a multicultural-multinational organisation which future graduates will inhabit. Few Asian schools have a global faculty or classroom which is similar to that of the multinational company.
What the data says
According to the data released by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) using the registration data of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), business schools in Asia received nearly 43,000 GMAT score reports from examinees around the world in 2010. This marked an increase of 116% since 2006 with programmes in India (+142%), Singapore (+164%) and China (+89%) experiencing the largest percentage gains over the period. The statistics however mean different things for India compared to China and Singapore. While the growth in India was driven primarily by Indian applicants applying to schools such as the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad or the Executive MBA programmes at the Indian Institute of Managements, marking an increased preference to study in Indian instead of abroad, for China and Singapore it instead marked an increased interest from international applicants.
Although business programs in the USA still received the majority of all GMAT scores sent from Asian citizens 2010, the US programs nevertheless experienced a sizable decrease in market share from Asian examinees over the last five years — from 75% in 2006 to 68% in 2010.
A few days ago, GMAC CEO David Wilson while talking to the Wall Street Journal said that there had been a dramatic increase in the number of people choosing schools in Asia over those in the US over the past five years and that it had been the fourth year in which Asia had stood first the contribution of the number of applicants interested in an MBA.