The Hindu Business Line : Indian B schools weaning away students heading for US

Top Indian business schools such as Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, have helped wean away Indian students who would have otherwise gone abroad for management courses, by offering world class management courses at an affordable cost, according to Mr I.V. Ranga Rao, Director-Admissions & Financial Aid, ISB.

He also feels that the compensation levels offered to the students of some of the top `B' schools in the country this year are sustainable and it is in recognition of the fact that to retain the best talent, companies have to offer attractive pay packets.

Mr Ranga Rao told Business Line here that the GMAT score was the basis for admission in business schools in the US and during 2001 Harvard was the first choice for Indian GMAT takers. But today, he said, the largest GMAT takers from India opted for ISB for pursuing business education. In that way, the top Indian `B' schools are displacing US institutions in the minds of Indians.

Reasons for popularity

Explaining the reasons for the growing popularity of top ranking business schools like ISB, he said while in Wharton or Kellogg the faculties from the concerned institutions would teach the students there, in ISB, the faculties from these foreign institutions come to demonstrate their learning in an environment like India where it was much more relevant with 100 Fortune 500 companies setting up their shop.

With globally comparable `B' schools like ISB situated in India, connected to the economy and to what is happening in the country, people felt that it was more relevant to do such courses in the country itself.

The drive to go to business schools in the US or any other country now was not what it was earlier.

Relevant courses

Mr Ranga Rao pointed out that even after completing any business related courses abroad the students would have to come to India for work. The model was changing and it needed to change.

He said this process started with ISB and it would continue, as the courses should be relevant and connected to what was happening in the country.

Asked whether the top `B' school students would continue to be offered fancy pay packets that some of them got this year (some students in ISB breached the Rs 1-crore pay barrier this year), Mr Ranga Rao said if companies wanted really competent people who would take the company where the bosses wanted to go, then they should reward and compensate them. People were looking for `star performers' to sustain the leadership position of companies and they would need to pay the key employees well. He saw the `reward system' coming into play in the country with very high pay coming in not dramatically but gradually.

ISB rules out expansion

Asked whether ISB planned to expand its reach by opening more `B' schools in India, Mr Ranga Rao said `for the present' ISB would confine itself to Hyderabad.

Answering a question about increasing the student intake, he said the new batch that would come in next year would have a strength of 425 students and ISB has planned to raise it to 560 in the next two to three years.

Though there were around 1,000 business schools in the country now, a lot of them were at the `bottom of the pyramid' and there would be only a few schools like ISB that would be globally relevant, he added.

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