Global outlook of Indian education is certainly a game changer in this age of faster growth and economic opportunity. International collaboration by Indian Institutions is prominent in higher education, which has remarkably transformed the higher education ecosystem. With premier institutions working on a student-centric learning development model, it becomes imperative to have a holistic and integrated outlook. This means, institutions have to enhance the learning outcomes for its students. While the enrolment numbers in higher education in the country have increased to the largest in the world, admitting over 70 million students, this magnitude has also amplified competition, making differentiated and impactful deliverables of education mandatory. One such driving force of institutional development is Internationalisation of education.
Impact of International collaborations on education:
Institutional collaboration by universities and business schools generate multiple advantages resulting in enhanced quality education. The impact will be seen in areas of research and development, faculty and student exchange facilitation, dual degree and certification programs, training and development, exposure to global business strategies, multiple social and cultural identities, thus, creating global citizen leaders and a future employable generation.
The partnerships help institutions develop into high quality intellectual hubs with innovation and research as focus. Collaborative research can be done by both faculty and students of institutions world over leading to a repository of knowledge. Most partner institutions support each other by involving industry projects at both home and host universities. Such projects help the fraternity understand the business models and strategies adopted besides being useful to the industry and business through consultancy and research.
Institutional engagement helps students become globally competitive critical and analytical thinkers. This shift is largely welcomed by the Indian industry as well with an increase in availability of students being trained in innovation, design thinking and entrepreneurship, contributing to overall organisational development. The tie-ups impact the Institutional rankings, increasing the quality of teaching and learning.
With India moving towards international credit recognition to enable more international student mobility, there is an increased interest expressed by the international students travelling to study and get trained by partner institutions in India.
Internalisation is becoming a norm in leading business institutions in India. IFIM business school, a premierB-school in the country based out of Bangalore, has been a pioneer in International collaborations running very successful exchange program with several world class universities.
Some such partnerships are University of Applied Sciences (UAS), Lubek in Germany and Esc Rennes, France. The institute saw a year on year increase in numbers of exchange students from Lubek due to a fruitful learning and living experience. Foreign exchange students at IFIM were exposed to work with Indian organizations and the IFIM students had internships with organisations in Germany during the tenure. This experience led to the term (shorter duration) exchange program scaling up to a dual degree, a full year program with UAS.
Another successful collaboration has been ESC-Rennes and IFIM. Every year students from each Institute undertake a term study in India and France. Students are assessed and evaluated by host institute and grade/credits are transferred through marks manuscript. All batches of IFIM students who were part of this exchange program for study have received appreciation for their performance and impeccable behaviour. French students too have found IFIM faculty, hospitality and academic instructions very interesting and were able to get different perspective to Management. IFIM and Rennes Business School have recently enlarged the scope of MOU to include exchange of students for longer term and IFIM students in 2017 would be enrolling for MSc in Global Business. Besides quality learning an in-depth cultural and language orientations are provided to the exchange students.
The objective of this programme is to provide the International exposure to our students in terms of academic inputs and industry visits, Project Assignments etc. At the end of the programme the students are well equipped with the curriculum which is a blend of IFIM (Emerging Economy) with the ESC Rennes (European Developed Economy), which will provide a holistic approach to management practices with diverse political, economic, social and technological environments prevailing in two countries. This provides an edge to the students in terms of handling international assignments in the areas of marketing, finance, and human resource management which is a clear differentiator and USP of the programme.
Thus, apart from the paramount transformation of Indian education, these International collaborations have also seen India emerge as a regional hub of education and attract global learners from all over the world.
About the author:
Prof Dr Githa Heggde is the Dean, Research and International affairs, IFIM Business School, Corporate consultant on Marketing and Sales enhancement, Vice Chairperson, CII-Indian Women Network and in the board of CII Karnataka, Country Director, India, EuroMed Business Research Institute. Member editorial board of International Journal on Emerging markets, Emerald, Core member at the Centre for Emerging Markets, IIM, Lucknow, Faculty resource IIM Kozhikode, MDP apart from other holding distinguished positions is various professional bodies. She has over 27 years of teaching, consultancy and industrial experience.
