Why Indian B-Schools are finding it hard to attract foreign students

Attracting international candidates is a big roadblock, admit Indian B-Schools. “We should just recognise humbly that the type of student we want has many good choices. If faced with a choice between a top B-school in India and, say, a Carnegie Mellon, they would pick the latter,” says Varun Nagaraj, Dean of the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research.

Plus, domestic B-school placements are India-focussed, but an international student might not be interested in working in India, says Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, but adds that IIMB is keen to bring in more foreign students through a scholarship programme, which its Board has recently approved.

Several schools are also facilitating international student and faculty exchange programmes to globalise the experience. For instance, Sangeeta Shah Bhardwaj, Acting Director of MDI Gurgaon, says the institute’s two-year MBA with International Business (IB) specialisation, where a student studies one year in India and the other in ESCP Business School in Paris, has received a lot of traction. “Almost all of the 120 students successfully completed their paid internships in Europe. Further, five-six of our faculty went on a one to two-week teaching assignment to European universities, and in exchange faculty from [some] European universities came to MDI Gurgaon to teach.” XLRI hosted 10 foreign students from three B-schools for one term of study in academic year 2022-23. In exchange, they sent 29 XLRI students to nine business schools across five countries.

“We are also focussing more on research professors and international visiting faculty,” says XLRI Jamshedpur Director Fr S. George. India’s severe climes also play spoilsport, says Suresh K. Jakhar, Chairperson, PGP, and Associate Professor at IIM Lucknow (IIML). “We have collaborations with a lot of European B-schools. Except for the December-March term, the students find the weather too harsh to stay here.”

Manish Gupta, Consulting Head at consulting firm MBA Crystal Ball, points out that India is not yet considered as a global management education hub. “Compare the number of Indians studying and settling abroad versus people from the US or UK wanting to do the same in India. Unless the perception shift happens, Indian B-schools cannot do much about the diversity quotient beyond a point.”

International accreditation or not, the pedagogy of top Indian B-Schools is no less, insist the colleges. But even they admit that international schools take the cake when it comes to class diversity. “In B-schools, 50 per cent learning comes from professors and the rest from your batchmates. Culture and business are strongly correlated. When you have classmates from various cultures, you learn more,” says IIML’s Jakhar.

The average Indian MBA class is overwhelmingly Indian male engineer, shows BT-MDRA data, at least among the Top 25 B-schools in India. The numbers steadily improve in the colleges ranked lower in BT’s ranking. In fact, the ratio flips in favour of non-engineers and an almost 50-50 male-female gender ratio in the colleges ranked 76-100. It is perhaps an indication of quantitative bias in the CAT (Common Admission Test, the entrance test for MBA colleges in India), which makes it easier for engineers to crack the exam and pick higher-ranked colleges.

SPJIMR’s Nagaraj says they are consciously trying to build candidate diversity at the admission stage, within the parameters of a transparent process. Indeed, the share of engineers has steadily declined since 2015 among the Top 25 schools, shows BT-MDRA data. “But it’s nothing compared to what they have in the US, not close at all,” says Nagaraj, adding that it could possibly improve as more students graduate from liberal arts schools such as Krea University and Ashoka University.

MBA Crystal Ball’s Gupta says the Indian two-year programme is less valuable abroad because of this class homogeneity of educational background, nationality and gender. “If there is no dissent, individual thinking within the group doesn’t get pushed up.