Though all students of ISB’s class of 2009 were not placed at the time of writing this article, Dean Ajit Rangnekar says this is a deviation from the trend of the previous two years, the “boom years” as they are referred to, when “anything that moved was placed by this time”.

One Vs Two
One-year executive programmes provide a thorough training in all management disciplines like the two-year courses. Crunching of the curriculum, however, makes it more rigorous. Those seeking entry into the course take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) rather than the Common Admission Test (CAT) refined for admission to a two-year MBA programme in all the IIMs.

“A fast-forward MBA programme,” that is what some management students, who recently passed out of a regular two-year post graduate programme from a top business school cheekily call the one-year counterpart of the course they attended.

PEER ADVANTAGE: Studying with experienced managers offers definite advantages

Her batch-mate Srijan Pal Singh, who passed out of IIM-A, has the same opinion: “I would never trade the post-graduate programme with an executive MBA. The two-year course has been designed in a way that in the first year you have an academic experience and in the second, you are nurtured as a leader,” he says.

But Punam Sahgal, dean at IIM-L’s Noida campus, disagrees. She is of the opinion that if students have few years of work experience behind them, the teaching can be faster without compromising on the learning, “There is evidence to show that learning is better when you are older. When you have experience, learning becomes internalised.”

Students who enrol in executive MBA courses may not be spending as much time on the campus as the two-year programme students, but the intensity of learning stays intact. “We learnt a lot from our peers, almost as much as in the classroom, since they are all experienced,” says Senthil Govindan, an alumnus of PGPX at IIM-A.

Govindan, who had eight years of work experience spread around the globe and has worked with companies such as i2 Technologies and Oracle, was looking to come back to India when he decided to enroll in PGPX. He is now working as territory marketing manager at IBM India. Referring to the curriculum at IIM-A, he says, “At the end of the day, the experience was overwhelmingly positive.”

Different people have different reasons to take a mid-career break and pursue studies. It is either for a career-switch or just a desire to hone one’s skills. One-year courses suit people who cannot afford to take two years off. However, some feel the executive programmes should be designed differently from the two-year courses, in a way that students are able to leverage their work experience better when they pass out.

Narayanan Ramaswamy, KPMG’s head of education advisory services in India, says the curriculum needs to be fine-tuned to the kind of work the students have been doing and the sectors they have been working in.

Dean of SPJIMR M.L. Srikanth sums it up quite well when he says, “They are for very different purposes, and so should be treated separately. A manager’s task is different at the entry level and at the higher level.”

What is more important to some is the quality of the MBA course irrespective of its duration.

binu dot kwatra at abp dot in

(Businessworld Issue Dated 19-25 May 2009)