Karachi Education Initiative, which is providing the initial core funding for KSBL, is a non-profit group of leading industrialists and businessmen of Karachi. The group has committed to raising a permanent endowment fund to support the education of deserving students at KSBL, as well as for the provision of resources, facilities and buildings required to create a world-class institution.
The school is headed by Dean Robert Wheeler III who has served at the Pennsylvania State University, University of Texas at Austin and Georgetown University in key positions like assistant dean and director of MBA program. Spread over three acres, the main campus of KSBL is now under construction on Stadium Road in Karachi. The construction phase will be over in July 2012 and the first group of students will be admitted in September. Initially, KSBL will offer a full-time, 21-month MBA program in general management only.
KSBL's MBA curriculum has been designed in collaboration with Judge Business School of Cambridge University in England. In addition to conventional teaching methods involving lectures and case studies, KSBL will use videoconferencing to let its students attend live lectures from American and British universities.
Wheeler told Express Tribune that the core faculty of KSBL would be of Pakistani origin with PhD degrees from foreign universities. “We’ll cut back on the administrative work that faculty is often required to do in Pakistan and encourage them to do applied research that could be used in the industry, government and business.” In many classes, especially those on entrepreneurship, Wheeler said more than one person would co-teach students via videoconferencing to provide them with a combination of academic and professional perspectives.
KSBL will join the ranks of other major business schools such as Karachi's Institute of Business Administration (IBA) and Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) to deliver world class business education for meeting the growing demand for professional management in the industrial and service sectors of Pakistan's economy.
The history of advanced business management education began with the founding of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in 1955 in Karachi, Pakistan, in collaboration with the top-ranked Wharton School of Finance & Commerce at University of Pennsylvania. Additional help and support came from University of Southern California and USAID to set up facilities and train faculty.
As the contribution of agriculture dropped from 50% of GDP in 1950s to about 20% of Pakistan's economy in 2000s and Pakistan began to urbanize and industrialize, the demand for business professionals grew significantly, as did the number of schools offering business education. As of 2004, there were 87 business schools recognized by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, according to stats compiled by Dr. Jamshed Hasan Khan of LUMS. Of these, 28 were in the public sector and the rest in private sector.
The rapid expansion of business education has raised concerns about the quality of such education. The HEC is responding to such concerns by standardization of business curricula and accreditation requirements. A number of programs have been initiated by the HEC to improve business faculty, including scholarships for advanced training and education in Pakistan and universities in the West.
Business schools in Pakistan have produced highly competent men and women executives who have proved themselves by managing significant topline growth and increasing profitability in banking, telecom, FMCG, automobiles and other sectors in very difficult circumstances. I am optimistic that the addition of business schools like the KSBL will further enhance the capacity of future managers to deal with such challenges.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Pakistan's Demographic Dividend
FMCG Consumption Boom in Pakistan
Pakistan's Financial Services Sector
Pakistan's Growing Middle Class Consumption
IBA's Entrepreneurship Study Flawed
Pakistan's Media and Telecom Revolution
Pakistanis Study Abroad
Pakistan's Youth Bulge
Pakistani Diaspora World's 7th Largest
Pakistani Graduation Rate Higher Than India's
India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2011
Educational Attainment Dataset By Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee
Quality of Higher Education in India and Pakistan
Developing Pakistan's Intellectual Capital
Intellectual Wealth of Nations
Pakistan's Story After 64 Years of Independence
Pakistan Ahead of India on Key Human Development Indices
Working Women in Pakistan
Pakistan Youth Roundtable
Scholarships at Foreign Universities
Institute of International Education--Open Doors
UK's Higher Education Statistics Agency Report
Austrade on Education in Pakistan
5 comments:
Here's a Businessweek story about India's MBA test for evaluating job seekers:
In five months, the MBA will lose its status as a universally accepted credential for management jobs. In India, at least, b-school grads who want those jobs will also have to take a test.
On Feb. 20, the All-India Management Association (AIMA) will roll out the Management Aptitude Skill Test (MAST), a screening test designed to determine whether business school graduates in India are qualified for jobs, according to several published reports.
The details are a little sketchy, and my efforts to reach someone at the AIMA were unsuccessful. But AIMA President Sanjiv Goenka, told the Financial Chronicle that the test was designed to help students. “The idea is to give aspiring management graduates a level playing field. It is not always possible for companies to reach out to all the IIMs and other B-schools while hiring. In the process, talented students are left out.”
Here’s what I know about the new test. It’s computer based and 150-minutes long, and it will test the candidate’s “management aptitude, domain knowledge in areas of specialisation like finance, marketing, HR, international business, operations & IT and assess their personality traits such as leadership, handling stress, decision-making skills, stability and teamwork abilities,” according to the Economic Times.
The Times is reporting that a number of big employers are already on board, including the India-based operations of Deloitte, MetLife, Pfizer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Nokia, Lenovo, and TATA Communications. But the Financial Chronicle quotes an AIMA director general, Rekha Seth, as saying the number of companies planning to use the test goes well beyond that. “There has been overwhelming response from both companies and b-schools,” Sethi told the publication. “We are looking at 200 corporate endorsements and have already got 100 so far.”
It's unclear to me if the test will be required by these companies, as part of the application process perhaps, or if it will be optional. It's also unclear if the scores will be publicly available (so employers can mine the database for high-scorers) or if the candidates themselves can direct the scores to specific employers (similar to the GMAT and other standardized tests). Other unknowns include whether candidates with degrees from schools outside of India will need to take the test for Indian jobs, and if the test will be required for jobs in India only or for any position for which a graduate of an Indian b-school is being considered.
-----------
I think most employers, even if they sometimes complain about MBA grads who need to be retrained after they're hired, still assume that business schools, whatever their flaws, do impart the basic knowledge and skills needed to thrive in a corporate setting. (If they didn't believe that they wouldn't pay them six-figure starting salaries.) So I'm left wondering whether something like this, while it might make sense in a country where the quality of business school education is uneven, would be necessary or useful in the U.S. and Europe, where programs are more established.
-----------
In a perfect world (perfect from an employer's perspective) all candidates would have internships before a hiring decision is made, giving the employer a few months to put them through their paces. But it's an imperfect world. A test is an admittedly poor substitute for an internship, but is it better than nothing at all? Is it better than "Trust me, he'll do a great job"?
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/blogs/mba_admissions/archives/2010/09/indian_mba_grads_face_hiring_test.html
Thanks for sharing such a nice topic on business school.
Guys,
Admissions are now open for two-year MBA (Agribusiness Management) programme from 2012-13 academic section along with its flagship (Rural Management).
Eligibility: Graduates in any discipline with minimum 50% marks or equivalent CGPA for MBA(RM) and Graduate in
Agriculture or any allied ¬eld with minimum 50% aggregate marks (or equivalent CGPA) for MBA(ABM)
Selection: Short-listing through IRMA Written Test scores or national level exams - CAT, XAT, MAT or TISS.
The shortlisted candidates will be called for GD/PI to Bhubaneswar/Bangalore/Delhi/Kolkatta/Mumbai.
For More details on admission check: http://www.ksrm.ac.in/pages/home/home.htm
Here's an Op Ed by HEC Chair Javaid Laghari published in The Express Tribune:
There has been a quiet revolution in the last two years, particularly in improved quality, access and relevance, which are the cornerstones of the Higher Education Commission (HEC).
Quality is a ‘process’ and cannot be improved overnight by dialling ‘Q’. Quality enhancement cells have been established in 81 universities which will monitor and ‘own’ quality and report to the HEC’s QA (Quality Assurance) division. Six accreditation councils, including in business and computing, have been established, and these will accredit professional programmes. An institutional performance evaluation (IPE) process has begun, and by next year, the universities will be given a scorecard on good governance. For the first time ever, universities and programmes are being ranked as per international standards, and the results will be published by the end of the year. A two-day orientation of newly-appointed vice-chancellors (VCs), facilitated by two British VCs and one American university president, was organised — also for the first time — to inculcate leadership and to improve quality in governing higher educational institutes.
Accessibility to university education among the population is now 7.8 per cent, and not 5.1 per cent as implied by Dr Tahir, and we are well on our way to reaching 10 per cent by 2015 as per the education policy, despite a 10 per cent cut in higher education funding. Pakistan spends 1.7 per cent of its GDP on education, and only six other countries in the world spend less. Of this, 0.22 per cent is spent on higher education and not 0.3 per cent as the article incorrectly states. Under these circumstances, the HEC has done wonders!
What the writer fails to mention is the new emphasis on ‘knowledge exchange’. Ten offices of research, innovation and commercialisation (ORIC) have been established this year, and 20 more are in the pipeline to bridge the gap between university research and industry. With a 30 per cent increase in research publications and PhD dissertations in the last two years, a focus on relevant research and a new programme to establish incubators and technology parks, the Pakistani higher education sector is on its way to become an economic powerhouse in the next two years.
This is the soft and quiet revolution taking place at our universities which is already becoming visible and changing the lives of millions of youth who are the beneficiaries of higher education in Pakistan.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/290255/a-quiet-revolution-in-higher-education/
The Indian School of Business and Inst of Bus Admin (IBA) will jointly offer executive MBA in Pakistan, according to The Hindu:
The Hyderabad-based premier school has signed a memorandum of understanding with Karachi-based Institute of Business Administration in this regard here on Friday.
As part of the agreement, ISB and IBA would jointly conduct executive education programmes in IBA campus in Karachi.
ISB would be responsible for design and delivery of the courses, Mr Deepak Chandra, Deputy Dean, ISB told newspersons here on Friday.
“Pakistan is one of the countries that have growth potential and we are always looking towards working in those markets,” he said.
The environment and challenges in offering executive education programmes were also similar in both the countries, he added.
Beginning from June this year, ISB is planning to run about 10 programmes for senior management executives in Pakistan industry.
Family business, entrepreneurship, business leadership and strategy, Mr Deepak Chandra said.
“Going forward, we will also extend this to exchange of students and faculty and also public/government sector in Pakistan,” Dr Isharat Husain, Dean and Director, IBA said.
The history, culture and environment were similar in India and Pakistan. Referring to difficulties in Visa, communication and logistics between the countries, he said:
“Our Government has assured us help. We will try making this collaboration more fruitful.”
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article3310728.ece?ref=wl_industry-and-economy
Post a Comment