One of these, the Delhi based Indian Institute of Planning & Management (IIPM), is taking its students abroad for live interactions with the heads of educational and corporate institutions so that they can have firsthand experience of the opportunities and threats they will have to face on a global scale when they start work, and how to cope with them.

"This 10-15 days' tour is compulsory for all students joining IIPM's Spring-Summer session of the two-year, full-time MBA programme. It comes to the students under the institute's Global Opportunity and Threat Analysis (GOTA) programme, which is an integral part of the MBA course," explains Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri, dean, Centre for Economic Research, IIPM.

Chaudhuri says the GOTA programme came into being only last year and the institute is considering including its Summer-Spring batch students too under the programme. "Under the programme, the students visit different international bodies and MNCs, see their functioning and talk to the heads of the institutions in different interactive sessions. These add to what they learn in their theory classes at IIPM," Chaudhuri explains. "This year, we will take our students to the UN headquarters at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, for a UN Security Council briefing and an UNCTAD lecture on `Sustainable Development'. The students will also visit Nestle's international headquarters at Vevey, Switzerland, the Swiss Stock Exchange and the Geneva Finance Centre, among others."

In its endeavour to render more global exposure to its management programme, IIPM has also entered into a strategic alliance with the International Management Institute (IMI) of Belgium, one of the top three management institutes in Europe, wherein IIPM students will get a joint certification from the IMI under the course validation programme.

Apart from its global thrust, IIPM's courseware lays enhanced emphasis on Economics. "Unlike other management institutes, our course module includes 15 papers in Economics and 16 papers in Marketing, in addition to other management subjects," Chaudhuri says. "The increased thrust on Economics is because unless a student has a clear grasp of economic principles and policies, he cannot be a good managerial decision-maker. It is because of this thrust on Economics that IMI has agreed to recognise our courseware as equivalent to their own."

IIPM also recognises the fast changing business environment worldwide and recent developments in information and telecommunication technology. To include these aspects into its curricula, IIPM has entered into a collaboration with EL-Net 3L to offer a one-year, full-time Master's in Information System Programmes with an IT specialisation. Students doing this course will get a certification from IMI, Belgium; IIPM; and to top it all, a direct certificate from IIT Kharagpur, too.

In addition to its full-time, two-year MBA and three-year BBA (Bachelor's degree) programmes, IIPM also conducts a three-year, part-time management programme for working executives. The courseware for the three-year, part-time programme is the same as that of the two-year MBA programme, but here, the emphasis is more on practicals-project learning and case studies. For this programme also, the certification comes from IMI, Belgium.

On the cost front, IIPM recently decided to increase its course fees across the board. The fees for the two-year, full-time MBA programme has been pegged at Rs 2.25 lakh; for the three-year BBA programme at Rs 2.95 lakh; for the executive development programme (three-year, part-time programme) at Rs 2.25 lakh, payable in six installments. This fee structure includes the cost for the GOTA tour. However, only the regular students of the MBA programme can avail of the GOTA facility.

A tree is known by the fruit it bears and IIPM's 100 per cent student placement record speaks best for it. The institute boasts that nearly 100 companies visit its campus every year for campus interviews. Small wonder, when you consider the effort it is making to keep its courses international level.