Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, is in advanced talks with the Ethiopian government for sending its students to IIM-B to undertake the Fellow Programme in Management (FPM).
If fructified, this could bring an international composition of around 8-10 students from Ethiopia into the upcoming academic session in June-July 2010.
Fee for the Ethiopian participants could be around $15,000 for the first two years and $4,000 for the subsequent years. Indian FPM participants do not pay tuition and hostel rent and are in fact paid a stipend and contingency support by the institute.
Surplus revenues from executive education are used to pay these stipends. No financial support is available for Non-resident Indians and foreign applicants, though. No foreign nationals are taking up this programme at the institute currently. The minister of state for education from the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia visited IIM-B early this year to discuss his government's interest in collaboration with IIM-B.
Under the guidelines being discussed, the Ethiopian government would forward applications of prospective doctoral applicants to IIM-B, which would inturn scrutinise them and select the candidates for the programme.
Gopal Naik, chairperson of FPM at IIM-B said, “We are focused on creating a strong doctoral programme as it substantially strengthens the research activities of the institute. Higher the number of candidates, better is the impact as well as allocation of resources,” he said.
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“We admitted 28 doctoral students this year (2009-10) and our plans are to have 150 students at the institute at any time,” Pankaj Chandra, Director, IIM-B had said at the institute’s convocation recently.
To attract quality Indian candidates, the institute has increased the monthly stipend from Rs 15,000 to Rs 24,000 for five years. The maximum duration allowed to complete the course is seven years. Additionally, a one-time grant of Rs 50,000 a year is provided to cover incidental expenses such as purchase of software and hardware, books, among others. The institute also supports international travel of students to present papers in reputed professional conferences.
The popularity of the programme in India can be guaged by the fact that the number of applications received have gone up from 272 in 2007 to 486 in 2009. Nearly 650 applications have been received for the upcoming academic session of which the institute is likely to admit 30 students.
The institute offers specialisation in disciplines like corporate strategy and policy, economics and social sciences, finance & control, marketing, organisational behaviour & human resource management, among others.