The BLoC interview. ‘We plan a big component of experiential learning in our courses’

Catering to the needs of the students is going to be the prime objective. Of course, as an academic institution we should also be very mindful of the consultancy work, research, publications, catering to the needs of companies in terms of management development programmes as well as faculty development programmes. We are taking BIMTECH in all these directions while making our students more industry ready. And, in addition to that, having good quality publications, consultancy and internationalisation of our academic programme... these are the broad agenda which I have at this point in time.

Every B-school brings in some amount of innovation on a yearly basis. But this year we are going ahead and revising our curriculum in a significant way. We are introducing many new subjects and also changing the components of each and every subject. For example, we are now going to have international certification as part of our curriculum. Let’s say somebody is doing cloud computing, we will be requiring students to take certification from AWS’ (Amazon Website Service) cloud computing online courses, which will be an integral part of every subject. This is one innovation we are bringing in, and for every subject we will have 20 per cent of teaching from the industry experts.

The benefit of AACSB is that we have been able to attract a large number of foreign students. Similarly, we are able to send our students to foreign universities for international semester-away programmes. Right now, we have around 45 students from eight countries doing a complete two-year programme in the campus.

They are from Russia, Zimbabwe, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, Uganda, Syria, Nepal, Bangladesh. BIMTECH provides one of the finest living experiences for students. So our hostels, our food, sanitation, the care done by the campus administration for the students is one of the finest. That could be one of the reasons why we have been able to attract overseas students, besides being an AACSB accredited institution.

Our students have gone to Australia, France, Austria, South Korea and Poland. But the number of students from BIMTECH who have gone out is fewer as compared to the number of students whom we have been able to attract from overseas.

Any academic programme, whether MBA or any other degree will have some basic fundamentals. If you are learning financial accounting, you have to have an understanding of credit-debit, irrespective of whatever is going to be taught. So those fundamentals have to be taught, irrespective of whether this course was being taught 10 years before. Financial accounting is definitely going to be taught 10 years down the line.

However, right now, what is required is that you need to have an experiential learning component incorporated into the subject. For example, we are also tying up with Tally, so that every student who is doing financial accounting also is going to be doing a P&L balance sheet. So giving them a hands-on experience, and more of experiential learning, is becoming the order of the day.

The other thing, which probably earlier was not spoken of in a significant manner, is the understanding and appreciation related to sustainability, about the bigger picture related to environment, gender balance, equity, diversity. All those were on the periphery in our earlier curriculum when I did my MBA about 30 years ago. We never heard the word carbon credit, carbon finance or sustainable finance. But now everything students do in every course has to have a sustainability component incorporated into it.

From our childhood we have been hearing about ethics. But how do you demonstrate it? Like, for example, no assignment submitted by students will be evaluated unless it has gone through a plagiarism software check.

So we are not just talking that you have to be ethical. You have to be right, you have to be good. But the ethics part has to be incorporated into the curriculum. So one is that any kind of a plagiarism would be dealt with very stringently.

We are also extremely particular about the way students behave and conduct themselves in a classroom.

For the summer internship we have about 500-plus students; that has not been an issue except for some of the foreign students. For final placement, as of today, from 478 students, we are yet to have 13 students placed otherwise rest of the students are placed.

Of course, the kind of average salary we would have expected has gone down compared to the previous year. Our alumni have been a very big support and have played a very significant role in helping us with placements for the current batch.

Yes, definitely. We are, as per NIRF ranking, the 48th ranked B-school in India and we are waiting for the next round of NIRF and I’m very hopeful that we will be improving. And definitely AACSB has intrinsically helped us becoming a better B-school. So it’s only a matter of time, maybe one or two years down the line and it will reflect in better ranking in the NIRF.

As part of our new initiative in the curriculum we are going to be associated with local MSMEs where our students are going to work as a consultant to them one day a week. So this is going to be a credit course and students will work to solve their problems. And we will be inviting the MSME executives for the project evaluation. So, the students will understand, appreciate, and more importantly, students will be acting as a consultant to understand the problem and come up with a solution and ensure that it gives a way forward to be executed by the MSME. That is something which we are very excited about it, and we are hopeful that that kind of real life experience is going to be adding significant value to our students as they go forward in their career.