‘For a fresher, an online MBA is a waste of money’: JAGSoM Director

NEW DELHI: Jagdish Sheth School of Management (JAGSoM) will soon launch an integrated BBA-MBA programme. Atish Chattopadhyay, director, JAGSoM, spoke to Careers360 about the BSchool’s MBA in entrepreneurship, track-based programmes, and certificate courses that can be “stacked” to make an international MBA degree.

Q. There are frequent launches of online MBA programmes. How effective is online teaching?

A. An online programme is for people who are working. If a student is not engaged in a job, they should join offline programmes. Many things are missing in online mode like the charged-up atmosphere of the classroom, the peers, and face-to-face interaction with faculties. The atmosphere inside the classroom and outside can never be replicated by online classes. For upskilling, online is okay. For a fresher to join an online programme, in India, is just a waste of money.

Q. Which has a better placement scope?

A. Placement is difficult for students opting for online programmes. Companies like McKinsey are not going to recruit a fresher from an online programme. That will always be from a campus and through a campus placement programme. There are two things we need to understand in business management – one, you have to understand people and two, you need to understand money. If one interacts through a laptop, what kind of understanding will happen? Pure online will not make sense. Online classes, together with campus interaction, will be the way forward. For a short-duration certification programme, online is fine.

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Q. Do you have short-duration certificate programmes?

A. We have short-duration certification programmes in specific areas like Tableau and SQL. There are three things – knowledge, skill and attitude. To build an attitude online is not the [right] medium. For skill, online is the medium. For short-duration or bite-sized programmes, online works.

Q. How does JAGSoM do with placements?

A. There are two types of placements in JAGSoM. International placements are those where people have been placed in New York etc., where the compensation is around 10,000 USD. These are all niche areas like cybersecurity and digital forensics. Then, there is something called “tracks”. In campuses like SP Jain and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, placements are driven by specialisations like marketing, finance, analytics and human resources (HR) and the roles are management-heavy roles.

In JAGSoM, we have come up with tracks or specialisations for management programmes. We have created tracks for customer marketing, sales and services, banking, capital markets, and fintech. Because these programmes are track-based and the students are groomed for a particular role, it is easy for the companies. That is why our placement is not a challenge. Our batch actually gets divided into seven groups because there are seven tracks and our batch size is never above 45. These programmes are in high demand. The students are basically trained for a particular skill or for a particular role and this is what we describe as role-defined careers. The student knows the role they are going to get into, and the company knows the role of the candidate they are looking for. It is an easy marriage and our placement is domestically very high. Cyber security is also a track. So for the domestic one, our placement is very good. Our highest salary for the graduating batch was Rs. 43 lakh and the median salary was Rs. 17 lakh in this year’s placements.

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Q. You have also introduced an MBA in entrepreneurship.

A. Yes, this is a very interesting programme and the first of its kind in India. That programme is essentially for three groups. Those who have incubated in an incubator and the students are out of college or in the fourth year. Some companies are grooming people with ideas in their own companies; this group is also part of the programme.

Next, we have an entrepreneurship programme for our two-year PGDM students who had ideas. We ran them through an innovation incubation programme with structured intervention and they graduated as entrepreneurs. Since they are not part of the placement process, for one year we gave them a stipend of Rs.50,000. We call them entrepreneurs in residence.

We are in electronic city, Bengaluru, and this is start-up capital of India. There are lots of mentors who run incubators and accelerators. They gave us the idea of a programme based on the capabilities we have. We have a strong innovation incubation programme, and we developed strong courses in entrepreneurship like Entrepreneurship in Finance, Marketing, Innovation and Creativity and Design Thinking. We have the capability of developing courses specific to entrepreneurs.

Karnataka has a very strong entrepreneur start-up cell called Mission Start-up Karnataka. It has got funding of Rs. 500 crore. They are now collaborating with us to work with these entrepreneurs. This programme has received very good traction. The first batch starts in October and we have only five seats left.

This programme costs Rs. 7.5 lakh. We are taking an equity stake in lieu of the fees from the company. Our aim is to create ventures and out of that, even if one unicorn emerges, that is an important way to raise money which can be invested back into education.

This programme is a first of its kind in India. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) started the process of approving PGDM for entrepreneurship this year and we are one of the first to get approval for it.

Q. What are your other plans for JAGSoM?

A. We will be coming up with an integrated BBA-MBA degree. We will also offer a BBA programme in which students will will study for two years in JAGSoM and two years in State University of New York (SUNY) or at Kedge Business School France. Another programme is a BBA with an integrated master’s programme in which, after three years, students can go to Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) Switzerland, or Kedge to do a BBA plus master’s. Apart from this, there will be two focus areas – the strong undergraduate programme and a strong executive programme. Here we are in the advanced level of talks with Rutgers University in New Jersey for supply chain management, with the University of Texas at Arlington for business analytics, and with Kedge for luxury marketing. Those will be certification programmes but the certification can be stackable. They can take credits as and when they want to and together, those credits can lead to an MBA. So, one need not complete an MBA in two years but do it in five-six years. This is an international MBA and will be at par with the standards of our international partners.