India needs managerial talent… supply of (foreign) institutes will take care of itself

How do you think you attract so many Indians to Chicago?

I can speculate,we havent done a study as to why our students come. There are two aspects that I think appeal to our Indian students. Our programme is extremely flexible… intended to support a wide variety of aspirations. The other reason (is) I would say the faculty are primarily researchers… six Nobel Prize winners have served on the rolls,and that I think attracts talent.

In India,scores in 10th,12th and GMAT are important (qualifying) criteria. Is it the same in foreign business schools?

Scores are important indicators,in some sense necessary but not sufficient to resolve the matching problem what set of students when put together in a class would maximally benefit from our programme? The admission process in our school does require a subjective file reader,in addition to objective measures. But inherently subjective measures are also not airtight… its just that we feel that it solves our matching problem better.

Theres a very old view that one of the major goals of going to a business school is networking. Looking forward at a time when we see the entire landscape shift so fast,what are some of the new skills you are looking at weaving inside your MBA,to make it more relevant to the next five or 10 years?

Twenty years ago we were known as a finance,economics and accounts school. Today we have some of the best organisational behavioural faculties in the US. So we are adaptive… There has been an increased interest in entrepreneurship among our students and we have gone from having almost nothing in entrepreneurship to an extremely vibrant programme-including the Polskey Centre for Entrepreneurship,where faculty have got interested,observing whats happening around them,and have created courses which are experiential in that sense,and also roped in adjunct faculty who are industry leaders. For example one of the hottest new start-ups in the US is Groupon (based in Chicago). The two founders are teaching a course on Internet start-ups at Booth.

You have courses in Singapore and in London. Is there a core course that is the same and then local subjects,local faculty?

We do not partner with any local institutions,nor do we recruit local faculty. As much as possible we try to use the same faculty and have as uniform an experience among the programmes in Chicago,London and Singapore… There is some amount of local customisation. But it is done by the same faculty,because we want to be reasonably assured they (students) had the same experience as any other executive MBA that we give.

Are these local courses open to everybody in the world? Say can somebody from Delhi join the Singapore course?

Indeed it is intended to operate that way. For the Asian region it is Singapore,for Europe its London. Even in Chicago,in the executive programmes we have people from Latin and South America.

You have talked about a Delhi centre too. Where does it stand?

Part of my conversation with leaders (in India) has been about the Delhi centre. Last year,the University of Chicago commissioned a panel to study the feasibility of setting up a centre in India. They wrote a report that recommended first that a centre be set up in India,and second that it be in Delhi. We are in the phase of figuring out where and how to fund it. It is intended to be a broadbased centre which will serve two purposes. The first purpose is to support faculty research; we have a lot of faculty interested in studying India as well as collaborating with Indian academics. Second,it will have some classroom facilities to provide a study-abroad component,perhaps,for our students in Chicago,as well as for us to provide education where we can deliver value to the Indian audience.

So right now you are not looking at full-time courses for students in India?

No,right now we dont have any plans to do that.

Transcribed by Pritha Chatterjee