The economic slowdown appears to have taken a toll on satellite education or virtual classrooms for professionals too as corporate sponsorships dry up for sponsored executive education programmes. B-schools say the applications for satellite programmes for 2009 have either remained flat or seen a drop close to 10 per cent.
K T Chacko, Director, IIFT, says: “We have seen nearly 10 per cent reduction in student applications for satellite education programmes this year over last year. This is because corporates have stopped sponsoring as many students as they used to earlier for executive satellite programmes. Even individual students who used to self-sponsor their education at IIFT have gone into savings mode.” The current batch strength for IIFT’s satellite program is close to 120 students. Its satellite program costs close to Rs 1.75 lakh for a year.
XIM Bhubaneswar (XIM-B) has also seen a drop in student applications due to the slowdown. Mallika Pathak, executive officer of XIM-B, says: “Our current or fifth batch for PGCBM education has 60 students. Earlier, the student strength used to be around 115 per batch. The decrease is because of the recession as companies have stopped sponsoring as many students as they used to. Moreover, individual students are also reluctant to take bank loans.”
XIM-B’s Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Business Management (PGCBM) is a management programme which leverages technology-enabled learning using VSAT technology and provides management education to working professionals across the country. The programmes costs close to Rs 1.5 lakh per year.
Ashok Banerjee, chairman, Consultancy and Management Development Programmes (CMDP) at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), says: “The batch size usually ranges between 50 and 250 participants in the different programmes. This year there has been no change in this range.”