Edu-leaders

Hyderabad – home to internationally reputed B-school, the Indian School of Business (ISB) – is set to host yet another prestigious international business school. This time, it’s the Schulich School of Business (SSB) of York University, Toronto, known as Canada’s global business school, which is opening a full-fledged campus in India.

The campus is slated to open in September 2013, and will be located near the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Shamshabad. The decision of SSB to set up base in India was formally announced in July this year.

Schulich’s India ties, however, go back more than 15 years, when it formed a partnership through academic exchange collaborations with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore in the early 1990s. Later, the business school established an academic exchange partnership with ISB.

India Calling
It wasn’t until around 2005, though, that the school began to explore the idea of building a campus in India. Schulich set out by opening a satellite centre in Mumbai to recruit students, provide career placement services to alumni, offer executive education programmes, support local Schulich alumni chapters, and to handle local media relations. The centre also assists Schulich students and alumni with career planning and career opportunities and provides customised executive and leadership development programming for executives of firms like Tata Group, Citigroup, American Express, Indian Hotels Ltd and the Aditya Birla Group, among others.

However, Schulich felt India needed world-class management education in the coming decade. “The Indian market is under-served in terms of high-quality management education to meet the country’s demand for professional managers in the years ahead,” explains Dr Dezsö J Horváth, Dean, SSB.

The talks between GMR and Schulich, for setting up a world-class SSB campus in India commenced in the second half of 2008. For GMR, a global infrastructure company, the decision to enter into management education with an SSB campus in India, was prompted by sound market research. Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony in July, GM Rao, Group Chairman, GMR Group had said that for the next 10 years, India would continue to send a large number of its students to Western universities for higher education. It was this factor that made the group look for partner institutions in the United States and Europe for three years since 2006, when, on the suggestion of Canadian embassy officials, it came across Schulich and found it suitable.

As Dr V Raghunathan, CEO, GMR Varalakshmi Foundation explains, “GMR was scouting for a top-ranked partner in the US, when the then High Commissioner of Canada in Delhi, Joseph Caron, brought Schulich to my attention. As we are US-centric, somehow top Canadian schools and universities have never been on our radar.” The fact that Schulich ranked among the top20 in most well-known international rankings like The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune and Aspen Institute, cemented the GMR Group’s decision to go ahead with the project.

Horváth promises that the India campus would be a mirror image of the Toronto one, and would focus on creating “a new breed of globally-oriented managers for the growing number of Indian transnational companies.” It means that Indian students can now pursue an MBA degree in their home country with a number of benefits at a lower cost, he adds.

The GMR Campus in Hyderabad will be the first full-fledged Schulich campus outside Toronto, and the first campus of a major, top-ranked international business school in India. According to Rao, “GMR will bring its world-class infrastructure development skills to the table, while SSB will bring its expertise. The campus in India will provide a highquality option for business management education to the best Indian and international students.”

Student Quotient
Schulich, a public, non-profit institution, will initially offer its two-year MBA programme to 120 students at the Hyderabad campus, apart from various executive education programmes for working executives such as an executive MBA, post-MBA Diploma in Advanced Management and Executive Education. So, once the GMR campus is up and running, much of the India-based executive education programming will be housed there.

When the campus becomes functional, Schulich will become one of the world’s few transnational B-schools. “Students from Toronto will have the option of spending either a semester or a full year at the GMR campus in India,” says Horváth. Likewise, students at the
GMR campus will have the option of studying in Toronto.

SSB says they will get the same education in India that the Toronto campus offers. In time, they expect the India campus to have about 40 per cent international students.

The school will develop specialised India courses, which could be in any of the business verticals such as IT, where India has a stronghold. “New programmes and curriculum innovation at our India campus will go hand-in-hand with whatever takes place in Toronto,” the Dean said.

Teachers and students will be able to move back and forth between Toronto and Hyderabad. It has been decided to recruit tenure-stream faculty globally from Toronto to work at both the Toronto and Hyderabad campuses. The faculty will be recruited globally, some of them will be from India. In addition, Schulich will hire local academicians for its Hyderabad campus.

“The India campus will significantly reduce the cost of international business education for the student community,” Raghunathan said. “The placement ofgraduates will be with both Indian and global firms, not only in India but worldwide. We will also offer students access to one of the largest global networks of academic exchange partners.”

In the school’s first year, courses will be identical to those at the Toronto campus in terms of core courses and electives. In the second year, additional electives will be offered. The programme will cost C$30,000 a year and Hyderabad students will be eligible for scholarship and bursary support of up to C$ 10,000 a year.

The school says it expects the student profile to be similar to those currently studying in Toronto, that is, about 28-29 years old, with five years of work experience, strong basis in a four-year undergraduate degree course and proven leadership or entrepreneurial experience.

Skirting the Roadblocks
Under the agreement, Schulich will develop the learning environment and academic infrastructure while GMR will provide the land and the physical infrastructure. Subject to approval under the Foreign Education Provider’s (FEP) Bill, currently awaiting Parliament nod, admissions will commence in January 2013. “We expect the FEP Bill to be passed in this calendar year,” Raghunathan said. “In case the bill is delayed, we have a Plan B to work with, which will be under the AICTE norms. For instance, Schulich already has a twinning programme in India. A similar twinning programme could be structured with a GMR-promoted business school, which will probably have three semesters in India and one in Toronto.”

Campus Tour
The GMR Group is providing the infrastructure – 25 acres within the overall airport zone. The academic building is scheduled to be built in about 20 months and the hostels will be completed in line with student intakes.

Architect-Partner, Rajesh Renganathan of Bangalore’s Flying Elephant Studio, has been roped in to give definition to the blueprint. Construction will start around September-October. “The design combines intense experience of nature with an urbane sensibility,” explains Renganathan. The school says it plans to invest about C$5 mn in technology and take care of its operations.

The SP Jain Connect
This collaboration gave the faculty the opportunity to live and work in India. “This exposure has been transformative for the faculty. It also gives the School a foundation in terms of knowledgeable faculty to draw from our campus in Hyderabad,” Dr Ashwin Joshi, Executive Director of the Schulich MBA in India Programme, said.