B-schools, research are the flavour at French fair

Management courses are here to stay and how! The two-day French Higher Education Week, which concluded in the city on Sunday, stood testimony to this trend among students. At the event, organised by CampusFrance, in collaboration with the French Embassy, students intending to study abroad, preferred B-schools in foreign universities.

“A management degree is important these days, because that is what companies are looking for. Secondly, a degree from a university abroad has so much more weightage than one from India,” said Dhwani Shah, a final year Business Management student, who intends to pursue a management degree from the United Kingdom.

Pooja Prasad, a 16-year-old student from Mount Carmel College, said that she planned to do an MBA after an engineering degree. Although she felt that a degree from a foreign university really counts, a management degree from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) was more prestigious.

“The tuition fee and cost of living in a foreign country is so expensive. Unless full scholarships are available, the whole affair turns out to be an expensive one,” said the IIM-Ahmedabad aspirant.

The popular destination to study continued to be the United States and United Kingdom. “It is the quality of education and exposure that draws so many to these countries,” said Prathik Bafna, a working professional, who was at the fair to look out for an appropriate B-school.

The most popular post-graduate study option at the event was Masters in Business Management.

However, there were others who preferred to move away from the beaten track. Bhavya Dharmaraaj, a pre-university science student, said that she wished to pursue pure sciences and get into the research stream. “The problem is that there is not enough importance given to research in India. Secondly, they are underpaid. It is no wonder that not many students want to take up research,” she said.

Dharmaraaj added that the ‘freedom of research’ lacked in India forcing students to purse research in foreign countries. “Whether it is the laboratory facilities or the career perspectives, they are much better outside India,” said Dharmaraaj.

Students have a fixed mindset and are not willing to think out of the box. “There are a number of courses to choose from, but students only restrict themselves to Information Technology, Biotechnology and Management degrees. They are not even willing to explore other options,” said Brijveen Saherwal, an Indian representative for a French school.

The options in life science courses haven’t even been tapped. It is a challenge to even get a student to look at options besides the usual ones,” she said adding that it would be a long time when Indian students start looking at alternate career prospects.