Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/269179
34 March/April 2014 BizEd Biggest challenge Out of the more than 15,000 busi- ness schools in the world, approxi- mately 4,000 of them are in India. This has led to an oversupply of graduates and a lack of employ- ment for many. In fact, India faces a huge problem of trying to generate employment for its 1.2 billion people—more than half of whom are younger than 25. Tradition- ally, only a very small percentage of overall Indian employment has come from organized, formal jobs. The problem has been exacerbated because the Indian economy has slowed to a GDP growth rate of around 5 percent, and recent eco- nomic growth has produced very few new jobs. That has left our business school graduates—even those from the top 50 business schools—in fierce competition for employment. Not only are there too many business schools, there are two distinct categories of business edu- cation in India. One type is affili- ated with a university and comes with an MBA degree. The other category consists of the Indian Institutes of Management and the standalone business schools that offer post-graduate diplomas in management (PGDMs); most of the high-performing schools fall into this category. To make matters more con- fusing, the two categories are regulated by different bodies: Competing in India Ranjit Goswami is dean of academics at the Institute of Management Technology in Nagpur, India. ing abroad: the overall expense, the time-resource demands, and the difficulty of gaining entry to other countries. To address these issues, many Western schools have developed partnerships with Asian schools. I have also seen an increas- ing number of Western students coming to study in Asia in recent years. At NIDA, exchange stu- dents are exposed to culture, phi- losophy, and business and legal environments that are much differ- ent from the Western ones they're familiar with. They learn that the solutions and approaches that work here can be quite different from those that work elsewhere in the world. To help our exchange students learn more about Thailand, NIDA runs an annual one-week summer camp in June, organized by our office of international affairs. The theme of this year's camp will focus on sustainable tourism to expose students to one of this region's larg- est industries. The program will include academic workshops on the strengths and weaknesses of tour- ism in the ASEAN region, a one-day course in the Thai language, and field trips to nearby destinations such as Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Historical Park and Ayutthaya Klong Sa Bua Floating Market and Water Theatre. Biggest hope or fear for the next five years We are most concerned with the new competition emerging in our own region. In response, NIDA will focus on what we do best: develop business leaders and man- agers through teaching, training, and consulting. Indian business schools are creating India-specific curricula that focus on Indian business models and leadership challenges.