- (L-R) Professor Henry Bienen, Professor Dipak Jain, Charu Sudan Kasturi, Adam Gutstein and Rajiv Verma
By Ananya Saha
After launching Studymate tuition centre for Class IX-XII in association with MT Educare in the year 2010, HT Media has announced another JV in the education sector. India Education Services Pvt Ltd is a JV between HT Media Ltd and Apollo Global, Inc. (USA).
To address the skills gaps in India, IESPL is planning to enter Higher Education with the Bridge School of Management. Bridge School of Management has been conceived to address the ’employability’ gap to help India’s rapidly growing Service and Manufacturing Industry educate and empower employees for a 21st century global workplace. Leveraging the best-in-class knowledge, experience, expertise and technology from Apollo Global, Inc. (USA), Bridge will aim to provide an innovative learning environment and industry focused management programs for working adults to boost their career.
To announce the launch, IESPL held a panel discussion on ‘Bridging higher education and industry needs: A Global Perspective’ recently in Delhi. The panelists in the discussion included experts from the academic and corporate world – Professor Henry S. Bienen, former President of Northwestern University, Professor Dipak Jain, Chaired professor of Marketing and former Dean, INSEAD, Adam J. Gutstein, Principal and Management Consultant Leader PwC, USA, and Rajiv Verma, CEO, HT Media Ltd.
Mr Verma said, “I strongly believe that it is possible for an enterprise to ‘do well’ and ‘do good’ and these are not mutually exclusive goals. Thus for HT as a company we realised that there is an opportunity, since there are many young adults looking to improve their skill sets in accordance with the needs of the industry, we decided to enter this space where we can’t only ‘do well’ but also ‘do good’. ”
The panel discussed how most management institutes today focus only on theoretical learning with outdated content irrelevant in today’s competitive world, which results in an ‘education-employment mismatch’. As high as 44% of recruiters find it difficult to find the right talent in the 4- to 8-year-experience bracket. On the other hand, there are millions of working adults who are unable to fulfill their need for career enhancement and higher income due a mismatch in the skills and competencies that they have and what industry needs. Forty percent try and upgrade their qualifications while making a career shift.
Speaking to MxMIndia, Mr Verma informed, “There is a lot of intricacies involved in this project. We are working with academicians and corporate industry to gauge the scene, We are also mapping the kind of courses we should offer. However, we do plan to open the institute in a year. Delhi is definitely one of the markets we will be present in.”
Talking about education needs and India in particular, Professor Henry S. Bienen said, “The world keeps changing, so what becomes important is to provide people with continuous learning and in a heterogeneous country like India, a lot of different institutional forms need to be developed to meet the needs of a highly differentiated population.”
Said Professor Dipak Jain, “When students graduate from American institutions they feel a need to ‘give-back’. This is the kind of culture we need to develop in India, where the students feel that the school made a difference to them. The most important aspect of an MBA education is the sharing of knowledge between teachers and students. It is equally important for teachers to learn from their students as we, in the education profession, are in the business of lifelong learning.”
According to Mr Gutstein, what is really required in management curriculums is the “focus on developing these sector specific skills”. “Additionally, there is a big need to take advantage of today’s technology and educational institutions need to remain abreast with technology as much as the corporate,” he said
By Ananya Saha