Psssst...You can get a special MBA here

A young university catering to the energy sector finds employers eager to take its graduates.

"Ninety per cent plus," says a beaming Dr Parag Diwan, as he talks about the ongoing placements of the 165 students graduating from the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES) this year, the second batch to do so since its inception.

Diwan is keeping a close track of these numbers for two reasons "" he is the vice-chancellor of the university, and, interestingly, also a promoter of what is claimed to be the first university set up on a public-private-partnership (PPP) basis, which is approved by the University Grants Commission.

Diwan is one of the dozen-odd energy professionals who invested in the seed corpus of the university project which has been leveraged to set up the picturesque campus on the outskirts of Dehradun.

"About Rs 50 crore has been sunk in," he informs. The government (of Uttaranchal) did its bit by passing the bill for setting up of the university. Operational expenses are met by student fees "" typically Rs 3.5 lakh for a two-year post-graduate programme.

If one goes by student interest, the domain-specific university seems to be a success. For its MBA programme this year, it received 5,000 applications, over 15 times more than the 315 seats available across various specialisation options.

What is getting these students so excited about management, or other, programmes in petroleum and energy? A part of the answer to that lies in family tradition.

"Over half of our students are from families who have been in the oil industry for generations," says Diwan. And then there are those who did not succeed at the IIMs.

Diwan claims his university is just a "notch" below IIMs in grade cut-offs and salaries. It may actually be better in some cases like syllabi, which is revised, believe it or not, every six months, thanks to an industry-heavy academic council.

It is actually a university with intense industry linkages "" the curriculum is designed by the industry, the university is run by professionals from the industry and its students are welcomed by the industry, claims the UPES promotional video.

Not surprising, given that a 12-nation, 22-institute tour was undertaken before the university was set up to make sure that the petro-managers and petro-engineers churned out by the university are useful to the industry.

Most institutes, even international ones, tend to be upstream-dominated. "Almost 95 per cent of our courses are those which no one else offers," says Diwan, who sees IFP (Institut Francais du Petrole) in France as the benchmark institute.

International internships and industry endowments (from Shell and Petronet LNG) are already a reality for the university, which has also started incubating outsourcing firms (business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing) around its campus to offer services like geo-data analysis.

It will soon be pitching for international placements and international faculty. As for the break-even time for a PPP university like this, Diwan tells me it is 10 years. Definitely not an investment recommended for the impatient and the weak-hearted.