IRMA 2 in Bhubaneswar

KIIT deemed University with the help of Verghese Kurien (the man behind India's first rural management school - IRMA) is going to set up a rural management institute in Bhubaneswar in parallel with Institute of Rural Management at Anand. KIIT is one of the premier Engineering colleges in orissa. In last one decade the institutes has achieved many mile stones and has been successful in bringing many talented professors to it. The proposed institute‘ll be named as Kalinga School of Rural Management (KSRM) and KIIT has allocated 15 acres of land for it. The plan is to start the course in July 2007 with an initial intake of 100 students. For the first batch KSRM ‘ll conduct a test on its own but later it ‘ll take students on the basis of CAT score. The students will get an MBA degree in rural management. There is also one more proposal of starting an mba program specially designed for NGOs. A Samanta, KIIT Vice-Chancellor is very much enthusiastic about the project. He started it all by requesting Mr. Kurien to find out the possibility of a rural management college similar to IRMA in last august. Afterward two ex-IRMA faculty members, L K Vaswani and H Panda visited KIIT campus to check out its viability. Satisfied with the details Kurien agreed to go ahead with the venture and will be the director of KSRM.

ISB no to GRE

The Indian School of Business (ISB) has been invited to join the Board of The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). This is because the GMAC data demonstrates that the ISB is one of the prime The Indian School of Business (ISB) has been invited to join the Board of The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). This is because the GMAC data demonstrates that the ISB is one of the prime drivers of the large growth in GMAT takers in India and in 2005, more Indians applied to the ISB than even to Harvard or Stanford. As you are aware, the GMAT has been universally recognized as the most reliable test for admission into B-Schools. During the past few months, ISB has actively worked with GMAC to resolve GMAT capacity constraints and therefore does not feel the need to accept GRE scores anymore. While ISB will not accept GRE scores for admissions to the Class of 2008, they will, however, continue to accept CAT scores for provisional admission.

IIMs against Quota

In a major setback to the oversight committee’s move to implement 27% OBC quota by a massive intake hike at the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) from 2007-’08, directors of six IIMs have thrown up their hands In a major setback to the oversight committee’s move to implement 27% OBC quota by a massive intake hike at the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) from 2007-’08, directors of six IIMs have thrown up their hands, saying it would be practically impossible to implement the quota at one go. The directors who met twice on the quota issue have told the chairman of the core group on management institutions, Samuel Paul, that it would be unrealistic to launch the OBC reservations on a full scale from next June. “The IIMs will have to increase the intake by 54%. Given the shortage of faculty and inadequate infrastructure, none of the IIMs can handle this extent of expansion in just one year. We must stagger the implementation, if quality is not to be compromised,” Paul, former IIM-A director,

Big Plans for ICFAI

ICFAI (The Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India) - which has few privates universities in the states of Uttaranchal, Tripura, Sikkim, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Jharkhand is planning to increase the number of private universities to 15 by year 2010. The total cost is estimated to be of Rs. 1,000 crore. Private University is a university which does not receive any financial support from the government. The concept of private universities is new in India but its supremacy can be seen in all over the world esp. in countries like the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other developed countries. ICFAI has already allocated lands in Nagpur (54 acres), Kanpur (60 acres), Chandigarh (50 acres) and Jaipur (40 acres). ICFAI has also started building its own campus on one-million square feet in Dehra Dun with a budget of Rs. 90 crore. The first phase of the campus in Dehra Dun is expected to complete by June this year. In addition to all these, ICFAI is building a 1.5-million square feet campus spread over an extent of 93 acres in Hyderabad .The facilities available in ICFAI Hyderabad are the best among all its campuses in India and the college is always ranked among top20 b-schools in India published by various magazines and organizations. The institute will be converted into a university once the Andhra Pradesh government implements its decision of introducing a Bill facilitating the establishment of private universities in the state. ICAFI is always considered as a high charging institute but it does spend a lot of money on scholarships. Across the country, ICFAI currently has 4,000 MBA students, 2,000 engineering students, 1,500 rural MBA students and 1.2 lakh students who have been registered under its distance education programme. It charges a fee of Rs 5 lakh for the two-year MBA course and Rs 4 lakh for the four-year engineering course.

IIMB's Double Shot - fee hike & seat increase

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, (IIM-B) has increased it s annual fee to Rs. 2.5 lakh for the Post-graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) programme. Currently the fee stands at Rs. 1.75 Lakhs. The decision was taken on Monday at the governing body met headed by Mr. Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman of Reliance Industries.

Announcing the fee hike after a board meeting on Monday, IIM-B director Prakash G Apte said, "At an earlier board meeting, we were deliberating over the Rs 2-lakh figure, but at the IIM, we spend Rs 4 lakh per student. Since most of our students come from a fairly comfortable background, we fixed this amount." and to justify the fee hike he later added "Average starting salaries today are in the range of Rs 10-12 lakh. I am sure students can afford Rs 2.5 lakh." And he is not wrong - "this year, approximately 75 students from IIM-B accepted foreign placements which is an increase of 50 per cent over last year's 50 students who accepted such offers". The students are not worried about going to countries to which they have had little or no exposure, for they have been trained in the skills required to handle different cultures. A small hike in fee shouldn't make anything to worry about.

Regarding the IIMs stand on needy students, Apte said, "Our commitment towards deserving candidates will continue. No student will be turned away from IIM for want of money,"

In another major decision, IIM-B will increase the number of seats in the coming academic year from 240-270 to accommodate the OBC quota. The intake for the public policy programme is likely to be increased to 40 from 30. "The IIM-B would increase the intake from 240 to 270 in the coming academic year to accommodate OBC candidates in a phased manner as per the Veerappa Moily-headed Oversight Committee's recommendation that 27 per cent of the seats in higher educational institutions should be reserved for OBCs,"Apte added. "The infrastructure we have today is enough to accommodate the present increase in intake. However, any further increase would need new infrastructure. Likewise, we can manage with the present faculty now. But, if the student strength went beyond 270, then we need extra faculty," he said.

Till Now Only few handful institutes had announced in the number of seat increment to accommodate OBCs according to the new govt. of India policy. Many top b schools are expected to give their exact figures in next couple of weeks.

AICTE instructions regarding refund of fees for B schools

The AICTE has announced new guidelines for B school to deduct the processing fee when a student leaves the institute before the commencement of classes. As per the new instruction no institute can deduct more than Rs. 1000. Previously there was no such law and institutes used to retain huge amounts of the initial payment made by students while confirming their seats to a particular program.