National Management school takes off

CHENNAI: In the Gurukul days, students used to go to teachers for gaining knowledge. Now, it is the other way round, with professors keen on enrolling candidates who are in the top ten percentile in management entrance exams. The National Management School (NMS) is one such attempt. Promoted and run by academecians from the US, it seeks to provide an intellectual infrastructure to b-school students.

Launching first of the b-school chain in Chennai on Monday, NMS dean Sankaran P Raghunathan said from the academic year June 2009, MBA aspirants can pursue a two-year full-time PG programme in management at NMS, which has entered into a collaboration with the Georgia State University of the US.

With three lakh students looking to pursue management education, there is no dearth of demand. In 2011, the number would shoot up to 10 lakh students but there are about 1,500 schools in the country, of which about 100 provide quality education, catering to 5% of the demand.

"Even if all the 1,500 schools are taken, only 40% of the demand can be met," he said highlighting the vision of NMS.
Set up with an outlay of Rs 3 crore, the new venture has enlisted University of Massachusetts professor of management Varghese George, Georgia Institute of Technology economics professor Usha Nair-Reichert, Georgia State university���s marketing professor V Kumar and accounting professor Ram S Sriram, besides Mr Raghunathan as its founding members.

"We felt NMS will set a new and much desired trend of insourcing American education, with 100 doctoral professors from the US, many of them chaired professors, and will create the foundation for a complete global management education," he told reporters here.

Noting that a powerful professorial bandwidth has charted out the academic programmes with rigour and relevance, he said "we convinced 60 professors to join and share our dream. We have 20 CXOs to support this vision and mentor the aspirants, who will get exposure to current practices in the industry across 12 sectors of the industry, government and society."

In a span of 15 years, NMS intends to build a system of 25 schools nation-wide. Its board of governors includes former directors ��� IIT-M���s P V Indiresan, XLRI���s P D Thomas and CBI���s R K Raghavan.

The two-year programme comprising 720 hours of class room work with 36 courses over two years comes at a cost of Rs 9.6 lakh, he said adding full scholarships too would be available for deserving candidates. NMS is also discussing with banks to provide funding options to students.