Date:16/11/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/11/16/stories/2006111619200300.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

IFIM school offers MBA programme

MOST MBA programmes offered these days insist on work experience from the candidates. Even institutes that do not ask for experience as eligibility condition and give preference to candidates who have worked in a management position. How does work experience make a difference to MBA programme?

Offering an 18-month MBA exclusively for working professionals in partnership with the city-based IFIM Business School, the AUT University New Zealand provides an answer: "Freshers, who are exposed to only theory, will not have a context to apply them. An MBA develops analytical frameworks and it does not give answers. If it is all theory, there is no way to see whether such frameworks work or not," contents Geoff Perry, Associate Dean (Development), AUT.

Work experience, he says, leads to dynamic learning where the students make sense of the theoretical frameworks and apply them to real issues encountered back in their work places. "An MBA with only freshers is only a functional one," he says.

The MBA applicants are required to have an undergraduate degree, with a minimum of three years' work experience. Applicants to whom English is a second language must have an IELTS (Academic) score of 6.5 overall, and a minimum of 6.0 in each.

The candidates are expected to have secured a good score in any of the B-School admission tests: CAT/ XAT / MAT / ATMA or take the test administered by IFIM-AUT.

RASHEED KAPPAN