B-schools opt for student exchange programs

B-schools are on the lookout for new frontiers in their zeal for student exchange programmes. Here's why.

Spock, the Vulcan character from Star Trek, retains his charm on B-school campuses. He has peculiar ears, alien to the rest of the USS Enterprise crew, and an exasperating capacity to make rational interventions in any discussion of universal relevance, even more alien to some.

And the charm is working its way into the very way business education is conducted in India. B-schools are getting increasingly enthusiastic about student exchange programmes, both sending students to other countries and inviting foreign students over.

Hyderabad's Indian School of Business, already in operational alliance with Kellogg, Wharton and London School of Business, is expecting exchange students from at least nine other countries.

The school has struck agreements with B-schools at Israel's University of Tel Aviv, Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Sciences, South Africa's University of Capetown and America's Duke University, among several others.

The big gain? Global exposure, according to Professor Rammohan Rao, dean, ISB, apart from diversity of perspectives. Agrees Elspeth Donovan, MBA director at the University of Capetown, who expects African students to learn a lot from "the success of Indian and Chinese economies".

Ehsan ul-Haque, dean of the B-school at Lahore University of Management Studies, meanwhile, waxes ebullient on the "timing of the exchange agreement", given the otherwise stormy state of subcontinental relations.

To Anup Sinha, dean, Program Initiatives, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, exchange programmes are "a must in today's integrated global world" for the simple reason that they help students "broaden their outlook on business and life". 

For its part, IIM-C has as many as 30 partner institutions across several continents. So where on the world map does the institute have students at the moment?

"The majority are in continental Europe, especially France and Germany. There are some in Asia as well as North America and Australia," says Sinha, adding that IIM-C is also trying to revive the doctoral exchange programme it ran so successfully in the late 1990s.

Possibilities for faculty exchange are also under exploration, though the difference in salaries and living costs are posing a barrier. 

Planet Earth, all evidence suggests, has quite a way to go. But the good news is that academics in the field of business education have always drawn heavily on a blend of global thinking and local learning.

Clarity of purpose, without which business cannot be business, tends to favour this sort of pragmatism. The more you think, the more obvious this seems: it is the artificial constraints that are the drag.