EXECUTIVE EDUCATION IN INDIA

Introduction

It takes all kinds of people to run a business. While the desk clerk's job remains the same day after day, a manager is posed with different challenges all the time. Even the best CFO may find it daunting to take on the reigns of the CEO. The job profile is very diverse. Despite 25+ years of work experience behind him, he may still need some re-skilling. And that's where a Executive Education comes into the picture.

According to the latest available estimate by BusinessWeek , the international B-School watchdog, executive education in the US is a $800 million per year business. And the largest share of this is provided by business schools. At the same time, schools stand to gain from the associations formed with corporate movers and shakers through this route in terms of placements.

For corporates, these programmes aim at training selected managers/high performers in specific skills to take on more responsibility within an organisation. In the 2005 EMBA survey by BusinessWeek , 163 companies sent 21000 employees to such courses.

In India, business schools by and large used to offer only standardised two-year courses focused on training fresh graduates. Over the past three-four years though, many B-schools have started paying more attention to this very different breed of students – working executives. And they are creating special courses tailored around the working executive's needs.

There is a whole host of institutes, of all grades, queuing up to woo this very lucrative and under-served segment of MBA aspirants — candidates who are three years into a job or five, or even 10 and more. Short-term executive training programmes or workshops have been on the rise year after year. Another popular format of learning is longer duration courses — spanning a year or more on a part-time basis. The latest addition, however, is 11-18-month full-time residential courses.

But just how big is the market for executive education in India? It's fairly simple maths. “There are 5,000 corporates creating wealth in the country. Each would have an average of at least 30 managers. How many of these are MBAs?” asks Ranjan Das, the driving force behind the long duration programmes at IIM-C.

What are the kinds of courses available for executives in India?

Typically, there are two kinds of Executive Education programmes: Management Development Programmes or MDPs and Executive MBAs or EMBAs.

MDPs are short duration programmes along the lines of a management workshop. There are two kinds of MDPs: " customised " and " open enrollment ". These last between a day and a fortnight. The fastest growing segment of the market internationally is customised programmes tailored to the requirements of a single company.

Open enrollment programmes are different in that they are open to all. So the school picks a topic like marketing, innovation, strategy or change management which it thinks will attract participation and any company may send its employees to attend the programme. In India, these programmes last anything between 1-7 days.

EMBAs, on the other hand, are courses of longer duration for working executives. They require consistent effort over a period of time on the participant's part. Most of these programmes fall within the 6-36 month range. The delivery is a mix of on-campus and

off-campus teaching via project work or VSAT.

Within EMBAs, there are two sub-categories – residential and non-residential courses. The former is a recent development. Here participants stay and learn on campus much

like in a post-graduate 2-year management programme. Only 5 institutes at this moment offer full-time residential courses of around a year's duration. These are:

IIM-Ahmedabad : One Year Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives
IIM-Calcutta :One Year Post-Graduate Programme for Executives
IMI, New Delhi :11-month Post-Graduate Programme in International Management.
XLRI, Jamshedpur : One Year General Management Programme for Working Executives
IMT, Ghaziabad : 15-month Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (Executive)
ICFAI Business School : One Year Executive Post-Graduate Programme

How should one make the right choice of programme?

Working executives, who want career growth or a specialty shift (say from finance

to HR), mostly opt for the full-time or long term programmes as qualitatively they are the same as the regular two-year MBA course but of a shorter duration. Says Suresh Mony, chairperson EMBA, S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research: “Two executives from Tata Motors from our first batch gained eight-years' worth of growth in their first appraisal after completing the course.”

For those who want to move up the ladder quickly in the same function, short specialized workshops make more sense. In most cases, organisations identify such candidates internally and sponsor them to undertake mutually beneficial MDPs.

Which B-Schools are leading the Executive Education charge in India?

Executive programmes make good business sense for institutes. Let's take an example. At the Indian Institute of Foreign trade, the one-and-a-half-years Executive Masters in International Business costs Rs 100,000 for a day-programme. In effect, it is a weekend course with about 90 days of classroom teaching. The same is also offered in a three-year part-time format. Let's take a moment to do the maths. When an institute offers a three-year, part-time executive management programme which ‘consists of 36 courses of 30 contact hours each', what does it really boil down to? Forty-five days (take a complete 24-hour cycle) of teaching out of total 1,095 days (three years) of the course duration. The cost? Rs 2.25 lakh.

So it's not surprising that all kinds of institutes are offering Executive Education programmes. An exhaustive list would look like this:

• Alliance Business Academy, Bangalore
• Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Trichy
• Department of Management Studies, IIT-Delhi
• Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, Delhi
• Goa Institute of Management, Goa
• Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai
• ICFAI Business Schools, Hyderabad (multiple campuses)
• Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal
• Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
• Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
• Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
• Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow
• Indian Institute of Management, Indore
• Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode
• Indian Institute of Foreign trade, New Delhi
• Indian School of Business, Hyderabad
• Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad
• Institute of Rural Management, Anand
• International Management Institute, New Delhi
• KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research, Mumbai
• Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management, New Delhi
• Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
• Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai
• National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai
• Nirma Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
• SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai
• Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT-Bombay
• Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development, Pune
• Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune
• Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune
• T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal
• Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT-Kharagpur
• Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research, Mumbai
• Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur
• Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar

What are factors to be considered while selecting a programme?

Understand the focus of the programme correctly. Make sure it fits what you're looking for. There are enough options in the market so you can afford to be fussy. Else ask your company to organise a customized programme.

Check the credentials of the academic director of the course and go through the detailed syllabus carefully.

Finally, make sure you've spoken to atleast 3 persons who've undertaken the programme in the past and can give you an honest opinion.

We will soon be uploading a new section on Executive Education options abroad. Watch this space.