U.S. universities target India to sell courses
By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 03 January 2009, 01:23 IST   |    8 Comments
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U.S. universities target India to sell courses
Bangalore: Blown by the recessionary trends, the universities in U.S. are scouting for revenue building opportunities by selling the executive education programs. "Our university has lost corporate clients to the slowdown. We are in India to build a relationship with the companies here," Professor Sumit Kundu, Faculty Director of E-MBA and Coordinator (department of management and international business), Florida International University told Business Standard. Earlier, as U.S. companies encouraged the executive programs with full reimbursement to the students, these courses served as a great source of revenue. Infact, at times the annual contribution to the total revenue of the universities rose to 40 percent. However, amidst the meltdown the companies have reduced the share of reimbursement to only 50 percent, which triggered a slide in the number of the students opting for such courses. Hence, to overcome the severe toll on their revenues, the universities are turning their focus to take a grip on the Indian market where there is a shortage of executive education programs in Indian business schools. Only a handful of B-schools in India like Indian Institutes of Management run such programs, while nearly 500 institutes in U.S. offer the courses which gives them an edge in the Indian education market. So, a team of professors from nine universities, including The Ohio State University, George Washington University and Northeastern University, is currently in the country to meet top companies like Siemens India, RPG Enterprises, GlaxoSmithkline, Mphasis and Infosys Technologies. But the universities have no plans of slashing the course fee. For instance, Florida International University charges around $50,000. It is looking at charging around $100 per hour as executive education fee from Indian companies.

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