Indian and Chinese students sustaining Business Schools during this lean period

Sep 28, 2013

Indian and Chinese students sustaining Business Schools during this lean period

The Indian and Chinese students want to make it big in the world of business and they will do anything to get there. While most of the MBA school enrollments, specifically in Europe, are falling; the enrollments by students from India and China are increasing. Specifically India. This was brought out by the GMAC survey of the MBA students – GMAC Graduate Survey.

US B-schools continue to be popular destinations for aspirants from China and India and the overall growth is largely driven by male candidates.

“There was a noticeable increase in programmes where India was the greatest source of talent (24% programmes) compared to last year’s survey results (14%),” said Michelle Sparkman Renz, director of research communications for GMAC.

Globally, the full-time two-year MBA received about 4.1 applications for each available spot, whereas the full-time one-year programme had around 2.7 candidates vying for every seat.

This is obviously in the backdrop of the falling applications in most Asian and European business schools.

A fall in international students once again kept the growth of European business schools lean, with just 38% of full-time one-year MBA programmes witnessing an increase in applications. Close to 54% of European programmes reported a decline in their foreign candidate pool.

In contrast, a drop in domestic applications led to a decline in applications in Asia-Pacific. Just 46% of two-year full-time programmes in the region reported increased applications in 2013 compared with 79% in 2012. Similarly, only 53% of one-year full-time programmes had increased applications in 2013 compared with 77% in 2012.

The survey also brought out an interesting fact of difference between the Indian and US MBA students.

Compared with the overall total, a higher proportion of citizens of Asia and the Pacific Islands, India, and Latin America owned a business prior to entering business school. Indian (26 years old) and Latin American (32 years old) citizens who owned a business prior to school were younger compared with US citizens (43 years old), on average. The majority of Indian citizens plan to start their business after graduation, while US citizens were the most likely to begin a business while in school.

Featured Image courtesy – Flickr/Aurora’s BSchool