Professors from the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), US, have unveiled new business courses for Indian students and executives.

The courses will be provided through the Academic Financial Trading Platform (AFTP), the first Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) platform started by CMU Professors Raj Chakrabarti (Systems Engineering) and Anisha Ghosh (Financial Economics).

According to an official release, “MOOCs have been taking the higher education industry by storm, offering university-level courses from the world’s top schools online for free to anyone, anywhere, through video lectures and weekly assessments that allow students to learn at their own pace.”

The statement added that the courses being offered on AFTP were comparable in difficulty to those taught at CMU and students who complete the courses would get a formal certification of mastery in mainstream business subjects such as Investments, Macroeconomics, and Corporate Finance.

It further said going beyond conventional B-school curriculum, AFTP training would also include the application of acquired skills to real-world decisions.

Co-Founder of AFTP and Associate Professor in CMU’s College of Engineering and Center for Advanced Process Decision Making, Chakrabarti said, “Massively open online courses are expected to transform distance learning by delivering education from the world’s top professors to students in any geographic location — including developing countries such as India. We see unique opportunities in India for online business and engineering education that are difficult to achieve in a conventional classroom lecture setting.”

Ghosh, the Co-founder of the AFTP and the Frank A. and Helen E. Risch Faculty Development Professor of Business at CMU’s Tepper Business School, started offering the first course in Investment Analysis in November.

The second course — Macroeconomics — will be taught by Christian Julliard of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from January.

AFTP, which is funded by global chemicals manufacturer PMC Group, has faculty from several top business schools, including CMU, LSE, and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

 

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