One Year Management Programs - the real MBA

I am just posting an article that has been published in goergo.in regarding the one year Management programs and how they are catching up compared to the two year ones. XLRI has been the pioneer in launching the one year Management Programme - the GMP and it is now the fastest growing in terms of the number of seats. Very First year when it was made open for all (earlier it was only a sponsored program) it had about 30 students, increased to 60 in the second year and currently increased to about 120 this year. Clearly leading the group in analysing the rich potential of the prospective students and XLRI takes a minimum of five years of experience and the current batch average works out to be about 7.5 years of experience. Read on....

Never too late to get back to classroom
By Liffy Thomas
“Why the heck should I continue with a job that keeps me busy from 9 a.m. to sometimes till two the next morning?” That was a frustrated Pradeep Kumar venting his woes on his two-year stint as Product Analyst with a leading BPO, his first job that he bagged through campus placement at Hindustan College of Engineering.
Twenty-four-year-old Kumar is a happy and relieved man today. He got his much-needed break from work by enrolling himself in a one-year Executive MBA Programme with Chennai Business School (CBS). “You are lured by the fancy pay packets when you are fresh out of college.
But, after working for a couple of years I realised what my interests were,” says Kumar, who will soon be starting his next stint with Marg Constructions.
He is no exception among the increasing number of professionals taking up jobs young. A one-year break from work is the easiest and quickest way to gain a Management degree as well as get a break from the monotony of office hours.
Today, one-year Management programmes are getting popular among young professionals with a minimum of two to three years of work experience. They are ideal for those looking to enhance their careers without a long hiatus from work.
In fact, a majority of MNCs have tie-ups with B-Schools, where a batch of professionals with five and more years of experience is sent to hone their managerial and leadership skills. And if you are a little younger in the organisation, executive programmes tailor-made to suit industry requirements are being offered in a number of premier institutions.
IIM-Lucknow, for the first time, has introduced a one-year full-time residential executive programme in International Programme in Management for Executives (IPMX) at its Noida campus recently.
“There is a huge demand for such educational programmes. We have students who are ready to leave their comfortable jobs to hone their skills,” says Prof. Punam Sahgal, Dean, Noida Campus, and Chairperson, IPMX.
IIM-Ahmedabad is equally impressed with the momentum its one-year MBA programme has picked up. “It’s just our third batch and without much publicity we have been getting students,” says P. Chandra Bose, Programme Secretary, IIM-A. From 60 students in the first batch, the seats were increased by 18 in the second.
XLRI-Jamshedpur, ISB-Hyderabad and S.P. Jain Institute of Management, to name a few – also offer similar one-year Management degrees. So have one-year Management programmes become the order of the day? Will they replace the traditional two-year programmes?
“I prefer to say that it is a trend that is catching up,” says L.S. Ganesh, HOD, Management Studies, IIT-Madras. While IIT-M does not offer a one-year programme, Ganesh does not rule out the possibility in the near future.
“Ours is a fairly young programme and for now we are concentrating on it,” says Ganesh, adding, “One-year programmes will play a large role in the years to come, but this will not displace the traditional two-year model.”
The binding factor in all these programmes is that it is rigorous and challenging. It encourages learning beyond the classroom. Good for faculty and guest lecturers, too, as students tend to appreciate the course better.
As ISB says in its website, “You learn not just from the faculty and peers, but also from successful leaders and entrepreneurs who frequently visit the campus.”
In addition, a one-year programme has a great advantage over a two-year programme because of the tremendous savings in opportunity costs.
What is also interesting is the changing profile of students who enrol for these degrees. In a majority of these programmes, 70 per cent comprise students with some or the other industry experience.
“For our second batch, we had 28 students from the IT/ITeS background enrolling with us,” says Prof. R. Sathyanarayanan, Head, Marketing and Marcom, CBS.
Also, it is the top brass from the industry who conduct interviews to select the right candidate. IIM-L, on the other hand, has 46 students in the first batch. Around 45 per cent come from IT and technical backgrounds, while the rest belong to sectors such as telecom, power, banking, finance and defence. It’s never too late to get back to the classroom.

courtesy: www.goergo.in