Foreign students at Indian B-schools

Having taken steps to usher in diversity in gender and academic background, management schools across the country are now looking at ways to bring in diversity in terms of nationality.

Top Indian B-schools are looking to attract foreign students for their flagship two-year management programmes.

Foreign students currently come to Indian B-schools on exchange programmes for a maximum duration of one or two semesters.

According to Debasish Chatterjee, Director, IIM Kozhikode, the trend of getting international students to Indian B-schools for a semester or two (extending up to three months or a little more) started at IIMs almost a decade back.

“There has been an increase in the number of foreign students coming to Indian B-schools in the last few years. We had close to 70 students coming in for a semester or two last year. However, whether we can attract these students for the two-year full-time course will depend on the kind of job opportunities that the Indian market can provide,” Chatterjee said.

IIM-K hopes foreign students will comprise 10 per cent of the batch of its flagship programme in the coming years.

Getting international accreditation and an improvement in the job market scene in India will help attract foreign students to Indian B-schools, industry people said.

Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta and XLRI, Jamshedpur are already pitching for international accreditation so as to attract foreign nationals.

According to Anindya Sen, Dean, Academic, IIM-C, the institute has approached the UK-based Association of MBAs (AMBA) and the US-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for accreditation. Nearly 80 foreign students came on a global exchange programme to IIM-C this year.

“We are close to getting our accreditation from AMBA and AACSB. Once these are in place, international students will feel more comfortable coming to our institute for the flagship programme,” Sen said.

Having non-Indian or non-Asian students in the batch will bring in fresh perspective and enrich the quality of the class, said a senior official at the admissions department of XLRI Jamshedpur.

“We are in the process of getting international accreditation by the end of this year. Once this happens, we will reach out to international students. It will be good to have a diverse batch profile in all possible ways,” he said.

However, officials admit that tough competition and limited availability of seats will make it difficult to bring in too many international students in a batch. “There is so much competition domestically. Under such conditions, if we lay too much stress on international students it might not go down too well with Indian students since we only have a fixed number of seats,” Sen said.

Meanwhile, IIM-C is working out alternative plans by providing six-month internship packages for global students to give them a taste of Indian businesses and practice.

Entrance examinations such as CAT and XAT for admission into IIMs or XLRI, respectively, currently cannot be taken by international students.

“We are looking at ways to reach out to international students by making modifications in our XAT exam pattern,” the XLRI official said.

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