Chifley eyes Indian executives

Australia's largest private business school, Chifley Business School has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian IT professionals' forum to provide a general MBA and an MBA in technical management to its members at a discounted rate.

Chifley is a subsidiary of the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia (APESMA). The school offers distance learning MBA programmes in over 50 countries. Last week, it had launched its long distance management programme in India which will be delivered on campuses across India. It is targeted at working professionals, mostly from the IT and engineering fields.

The course material will be available online and face-to-face classes will be conducted for students on a demand basis. Chifley is offering a one-and-a-half year MBA programme, M tech programme in project management, graduate diploma in management and graduate certificate course in management among others.

In India, Chifley has ambitious plans of expanding in the fast growing business education market. The B-school which offers corporate training programmes worldwide, is gearing up to do the same in India. Chifley is in talks with several Indian companies to offer them its management programmes, said Chifley's chief executive, Neil Edwards.

"We have been talking to a lot of corporates, many of them from the IT industry. Response from the corporate side has been good and we might possibly tie-up with companies to offer its executives our programmes," he said.

The market for Chifley's programmes among corporates has traditionally been in the IT, engineering, energy and transport industries. Besides, MBA programmes, the school intends to offer programmes for executives too. These will include a programme in human resources, diploma in business frontline management and competency management programme.

The corporate training programme is targeted at middle-level management executives.The duration of the executive training program is three to six months.