Over 79,410 students cleared MBA entrance in state

The results of Maharashtra's last MBA entrance exam conducted by Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) on March 11 are out and over 79,410 students have managed to clear it. State technical education director Subhash Mahajan told TOI from Mumbai that about 82,764 students actually appeared for the examination of which 3,354 were disqualified on various counts. Those clearing the exam would fight it out for nearly 34,000 seats available in over 400 colleges across the state. From Nagpur division comprising six districts, 9,226 candidates had registered for this year's exam of which over 8,000 actually appeared at three centres. But in comparison to 2010 where 11,600 had appeared, and 2009 where over 19,000 had taken this exam, this year's number was still less. According to DTE officials, the MAH-MBA/MMS-CET was conducted across 21 centres in the division of which, 19 were in Nagpur while one each was allocated to Bhandara and Chandrapur. A total of 5,490 seats are up for grabs in 60 colleges across the division. Last year however, about 2,677 seats remained vacant which led to institutions going into bankruptcy. The entrance was originally scheduled for February 26 but since its dates were clashing with All India Council for Technical Education's (AICTE) Common Management Aptitude Test (CMAT), it was postponed. A majority of colleges from the division have stated that they will also accept CMAT scores for admission. The Maharashtra government had already granted approval for the CMAT which means this will be last MAH-MBA/MMS-CET to be conducted by the DTE. The exam is conducted for admissions into courses offered in government, university managed, university departments and unaided institutes in the state. However, the official expressed concern over fading popularity of management courses in the state. Though the number of MBA seats is increasing every year, the colleges are facing students' crunch, especially the new ones. Even in the 2010-11 session, over 5,000 MBA seats remained vacant all over the state. Schedule for MAH-MBA/MMS-CET-2012 * Registration for GD/PI & receipt of call letter- April 19 to 30 * Conduct of GD/PI at select centres - May 10 to 31 * Submission of work experience certificate - May 10 to 21 * Document verification at various ARCs - May 10 to 31 * Display of provisional merit list on website - June 16 at 5pm * Submission of grievance applications - June 18 to 19 * Display of final merit list on website - June 25 at 5pm MBA CET students' stats: Appeared - 82,764 Passed - 79,410 Disqualified - 3,354

Importance of Interdisciplinary Learning

In Conversation with  Mark Taylor, dean, Warwick Business School on importance of interdisciplinary learning in management education 


Q- Can you tell us about what changes you plan to introduce to strengthen Warwick in the eyes of students, academicians and the corporate world? 


Our ambition is to make WBS the leading university-based business school in Europe. The strategy we have developed in order to achieve this ambition involves designing and implementing a range of innovations which break new ground for business schools, as well as demanding excellence in all of the usual, more traditional business school areas. For example, the establishment at WBS of a new teaching and research group in behavioural science. This is an explicitly interdisciplinary area which brings together economics, finance, psychology, sociology, management science and neuroscience in an attempt to understand the hidden causes of human behaviour, and we believe this approach will lie at the centre of business school research and teaching for the next generation. Indeed, WBS has already made a number of high-level appointments to establish the first behavioural science group in a European Business School, although some US schools - notably Chicago Booth - have already gone down this route. Prior to becoming Dean at Warwick, I ran a large investment fund as a Managing Director atBarclays and it became clear to me then that we need to look across the academic silos if we are to understand the real world. 


Q- Give us your views on the global economic scenario and its effect on how students are considering MBA qualification? Have you noticed any change in the quality and the number of applications to the school's full-time MBA programme? 


Applications for the Warwick full-time MBA have been challenging over the past few years. To some extent, this is in line with previous experience over the business cycle as well as consistent with the current experience of other business schools. In particular, experience suggests that during times of high uncertainty, full-time MBA candidates postpone application until a later stage of the recruitment cycle (and possibly the business cycle) while their personal circumstances clarify. 


Interestingly, demand for other modes of the WBS MBA study (executive, corporate and distance learning) remains robust to the cycle, while applications for our specialist MSc programmes (such as the top-rated WBS MSc in Finance) and to the WBS MSc in Management can only be described as extremely buoyant. 


Q- Are there any new courses Warwick plans to introduce for the undergraduate programmes? 


There are no firm plans at present, but it is an area we will watch carefully. We're a market leader for undergraduate programmes in Europe, but at present UK institutions are restricted by the government on the number of students we can admit. So we could only launch a non-European Union course at present and we feel this would damage the diversity of the Warwick campus by not being able to admit any student from the UK/ EU. 


Q- Most premier institutes opening campuses across the world, do you plan to follow suit? 


It's an emerging area for Warwick and something we will continue to consider. Yes, I'm aware that many institutes have opened campuses, but it'll be interesting to see their relative success. For Warwick, it'd have to be the right fit with our commitment to academic excellence, be a research active operation and mirror our culture and values. 

Part-time MBA from DU's Faculty of Management Studies may cost more

The two part-time, three-year management courses at the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi University, are set to be costlier from the next academic session. Not only that: the names of the courses will change and their duration will be reduced to two years. The proposals are likely to be approved by the academic and executive councils on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. 

It's been proposed to hike the fees of MBA (part time) and MBA (healthcare administration) to Rs 50,000 per annum from Rs 11,000. And henceforth, these courses will be known as MBA (executive) and MBA (executive) healthcare administration. And the intake of students in one course will also go down. 

At present, the B-school admits 232 students for the MBA (part time) course; after the new structure is implemented, only 172 will be absorbed. In the healthcare administration course, the B-school will admit 42 students instead of 37. 

A senior FMS official said the faculty approved the proposed changes as there has been a gradual decline in the number of takers for the two courses. "World over, the executive programmes are of maximum two years duration; so, it makes no sense to keep the duration at three years," the official added. 

Stating that there will be no dilution of the curriculum because of shortening of the duration, a senior faculty member of the FMS said that the programme will be more intensive. Now, the students of part-time programmes must have 75% attendance and will have to clear the courses within a period of four years. 

The duration of the courses would be two years now and it has been proposed to raise the fees to Rs 50k.