Specialised MBA courses Now in Demand in India

More than two-thirds (67%) of two-year fulltime MBA programmes that participated in the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) application trends survey reported a decline in application volume in the 2010-11 intake from the 2009-10 season.

The survey included a sample size of 649 MBA programmes from 331 business schools, representing 45 countries.

“Applications to two-year full-time programmes are coming off historic highs in 2008,” says Ashish Bhardwaj, Director of GMAC’S South Asia region.

“In the beginning of the economic recession, people are likely to go back to school to retool and be ready for when the economy rebounds.
But in this prolonged downturn, people are much more hesitant to leave their jobs and go back to school because they are unsure if they will be able to renter the workforce at the right level when they graduate.

The improvement on the economic front has been patchy and in the absence of a clear trend towards recovery, candidates are hesitating to make the time and cost commitment towards a two-year full time MBA programme.”

However, there’s been a surge in applications to specialised management programmes, such as finance and accounting.

The masters in finance programmes led the trend with 83% increase in applications, followed by the masters in management programmes at 69% and masters in accounting programmes at 51%.

Academics say that specialised knowledge amounts to better employability, which may be a cause for this trend.

“I believe that having an indepth knowledge in a particular field gives one a competitive advantage to those who come from a general MBA background,” says Bhargavi Kakunuri, a student at XLRI.

Related Articles: 

1) To know about "MBA" in detail, click here.

2) To know about "Sub-Categories under Management" click here.

3) To know about "Executive MBA: A Broad Overview" click here.

Source: HTEducation