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India: Indian banks ‘go slow’ on foreign education loans: Indian students, Educomp and Intel, IIMs, PSU banksIndian students planning to study abroad will find it difficult to secure educational loans from PSU banks. The government plans to set up 6000 new Model schools across the country. Educomp and Intel are currently implementing a pilot program to increase use of technology in educating children. Samsung has announced scholarships for Indian students planning to study in Korea. -Chillibreeze Business Research Team
Trends TrendsIIMs gaze at internships for placement signals The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are keeping an eagle eye on the upcoming summer placements season, seeing it as a pointer to how students will fare when final placements take place in fraught economic circumstances. There is no nervousness yet, but IIMs — most of whom open their summer placements windows in mid-November — have adjusted their campus placements strategy for an economic downturn by inviting more companies than they usually do and expanding the catchment area into sectors which do not traditionally hire management graduates in large numbers. And even among the IIMs, the older and more prominent ones appear hopeful that the rough end of the stick will not be reserved for them. On the other hand, those such as IIM-Shillong find themselves swimming against the tide. The youngest of the country’s seven IIMs was started only this year and it is finding that making inroads into the finance sector to place its first batch of 64 students for internships is not proving easy. IIM-Calcutta, which was set up in 1961 as the country’s first national institute for post-graduate management education, is finding that beleaguered former investment banks like Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs are keeping the deep ties with it almost intact. Companies have already made their presentations and will start placements from today for the 300 students in the first year of post-graduation. The changed economic circumstance has prompted IIM-Bangalore to invite some 110 firms for its batch of 300 students instead of the 60-70 companies it usually calls. The institute, which was recently named the top business school in India by French educational agency Eduniversal, attracts 40% of its recruiters coming from the financial sector. This year, when companies start visiting from Tuesday, the erstwhile I-banks — Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — as well as JP Morgan, won’t be there. Bharat Bhasker, Professor of Information Technology & Systems at IIM-Lucknow, says that the institute is “cautiously optimistic.” “Summer placement is serious business and will give us an idea about final placements. The institute is exploring more non-financial sectors and relying on companies with which we have been dealing in the past,” he said. IIM-Kozhikode is the first tier-1 business school with a batch size larger than 120 to finish its summer internship placements for 2009. All students were placed on schedule despite an increase of 42% in the batch size and the ongoing economic crisis. Those fears, it turns, were entirely misplaced. Over a hundred companies participated in the process this year compared to 66 last year. All 261 students were placed in companies of their choice, with 14 of them getting offers to work overseas. More than a quarter of the students placed this year by IIM-Kozhikode will intern in finance companies. Nearly the same number will be doing marketing internships. Coca-Cola offered the highest domestic stipend, at Rs 1 lakh for the duration of internship, while Vega Foods, a Singapore-based company, offered $6,000. Banks and other financial institutions actually increased the number of offers compared to last year. If the experience of the Kerala-based IIM is anything to go by, students at the country’s top B-schools may not be confronted by unpleasant surprises. We’ll know soon. PSU banks turn cautious on foreign education loans Indian students going in for higher education or job-specific courses overseas will find it tough to get loans from Indian banks. Most banks are going slow on clearing such loan applications as the employment scenario has turned adverse due to the financial crisis faced by most companies.Also, repayment capabilities have become a concern with most companies exercising caution on entry-level salaries. Banks are now insisting on higher interest rates, collaterals and guarantees for job-specific courses like hotel management and pilot training. Banks, especially state-owned banks, were hyper-active in extending educational loans in the past four years. The annual disbursement of educational loans almost doubled in the four years till March 2008. Bank of Baroda sources said admissions for this educational year in countries like the US and the UK have already happened in the August-October period and loan disbursements have been made. In the backdrop of the slowdown, the bank will be careful in taking such decisions in future. The bank has already gone slow in extending loans to courses relating to the aviation sector.Another public sector bank executive, however, said he does not see any slowdown in educational loans. Despite the financial crisis in developed economies, the delinquencies are low. PolicyCabinet approves setting up of 6,000 Model Schools The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) gave its approval for the setting up of 6,000 Model Schools at the block level across the country. A 'Model School' will have infrastructure and facilities, at least of the standard as in a Kendriya Vidyalaya and with stipulations on pupil-teacher ratio, ICT usage, holistic educational environment, appropriate curriculum and emphasis on output and outcome. Initially, in the first phase of the implementation of this Centrally Sponsored Scheme, 2,500 Model Schools will be set up in the Educationally Backward Blocks (EBBs). The main objectives of the scheme is to have at least one good quality secondary school in every block; have a pace setting role for these schools; try out innovative curriculum and pedagogy and to be a model in infrastructure, curriculum, evaluation and school governance. The land for these schools will be identified and provided by the State Governments free of cost. The medium of instructions in these schools will be decided by the State Governments. However, special emphasis will be given on the teaching of English & spoken English. The schools will have classes from VI to XII, or IX to XII and will be run by State Government societies similar to Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan. Corporate PlansEducomp, Intel to launch learning solution for schools Online learning solutions provider Educomp in collaboration with world's largest computer chip maker Intel will launch a programme for promoting the use of technology Under the programme -- Educomp O3 Learning System -- every child in school would be provided an Intel Classmate Personal Computer loaded with applications specially designed for the schools. The company, earlier, had run a pilot project of the programme in eight schools in India. November 9, 2008 Samsung to offer scholarship to Indian students Looking to tap Indian talent and nurture them as its future leaders, South Korean consumer giant Samsung will offer scholarships to those pursuing management and masters studies in Korean universities. The company has announced its 'Global Scholarship Program' for Indian students to study MS and MBA at universities in Korea, besides providing an opportunity to work with the company in the country. Its fully paid scholarship programme, include MS programme for undergraduate engineering students at Seoul National University and MBA programme at the Sung Kyun Kwan University. Based on the availability of candidates meeting with the required criteria, India would be sending eight candidates against the total GSP allocation of 20 seats this year, across both the programmes, he added. November 9, 2008 OthersWest Bengal universities tie up with Italian institutions A high-level delegation from Italy on Friday inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with several leading West Bengal universities here to launch an educational exchange programme. The academic delegation from the University and Polytechnic of Turin signed the agreement with four premier West Bengal universities - Calcutta University, Jadavpur University, Rabindra Bharati University and Burdwan University. Jharkhand to set up aviation school The Jharkhand government announced setting up of an aviation academy to train pilots in the state. At present, the state government spends nearly Rs.70 million a year on training tribal students to become pilots. The academy, with a proposed investment of Rs.5 billion, will initially train a batch of 30 tribal students from the state. IIM-A to assess jobs' decency level Your pay may be good, but is your job decent? That’s the question IIM-A would pose to executives. The exercise is aimed at making an employee understand certain aspects of his worklife that he usually tends to ignore. So, aspects like freedom of expression, productivity, and gender equality go under the head ‘decency’ . IIM-A will look after the Indian leg of the international project that aims to help an employee assess his worklife vis-a-vis his counterparts in other countries and find out how fair and enjoyable it is. The project is part of a larger project being carried out by Wage Indicator Foundation, a non-profit organisation associated with University of Amsterdam that will help an employee compare his salary with those of his counterparts in other cities, organisations and countries, through a website, paycheck.in. Now, a person may log onto decentworkcheck .org and use a series of questions to assess his work situation and compare it with international practices. The project is also simultaneously being carried out in South Africa and The Netherlands. “The idea behind the project is to promote the feeling of ‘decent work’ among employees across all sectors and make people appreciate such aspects of a job that make it fair and acceptable,’’ said professor of personnel and industrial relations at IIM-A , Biju Varkkey, who is behind the Indian chapter of the project. While aspects such as ‘productive work,’ ‘job security,’ ‘fair income,’ ‘social protection ,’ ‘career development,’ and ‘gender equality’ help measure a decent work, the project aims to explore certain aspects of decent work from employees’ perspective in Indian work situation, added Mr Varkkey. An earlier global study on wage indicator data reveals that on an average, 4 out of 10 employees work more hours than agreed upon in their contracts and half of them are not compensated for the extra hour they put in. Employees around the globe find their work mentally and physically exhausting. The data compares decent work standards of 3,50,000 employees across 11 countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa. |
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