LACKING A GLOBAL PROFILE

With close to 4,000 B-schools, management education system in India produces the largest number of MBAS globally. However, a very small proportion of those are from outside India.

Among the 267 B-schools evaluated for Business Today-MDRA B-school Ranking 2016, the number of international students has declined from 381 in academic year 2013/14 (AY '14) to 307 in AY '16 in flagship MBA programmes. This is despite a marginal rise in total admissions in these institutions - 36,879 to 39,358. Thus only 1.03 per cent of students were from outside India in AY'14, which has further declined to 0.78 per cent in AY'16.

The situation is worse if we consider the top 10 B-schools in the country. The number of international students has fallen from 48 to 33 during the same period while the student intake has risen from 3,314 to 3,419. Surprisingly, India's pride and top-ranked IIM-A does not have a single student from outside India in the flagship PGDM programme during this three-year period.

The scenario is radically different if we look at any top-ranked institute globally. A random look at global top B-schools suggests that over onethird of students are international students.

GMAT is a globally accepted universal admission test for coveted MBA programmes. However, out of 267 B-schools in our study, only 69 institutes accept GMAT scores. As someone has rightly said, B-schools are not a place only for education and skill development, but also for networking. The next aim of Indian B-schools should be to establish themselves as truly global institutions.

Abhishek Agrawal is Executive Director, MDRA