New Delhi: The Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) has merged its integrated the two year full-time MBA in Management of Services (MBA-MS) with its flagship MBA (full-time) programme, from the current academic year. As a result of the merging of the two courses the degree to be offered now will be known as MBA (FT). The institute started the MBA-MS course from academic year 2004-2005, in response to a sudden burst in the services sector.
Kuriakose Mamkoottam, Dean, Faculty of Management Studies has said that the MBA-MS course was introduced five years back to specifically serve the needs of the services sector. It was meant to be a niche programme for a niche market. However, the institute faced some problems on the placement front as corporates had their reservations in terms of recruiting students from this new course.
Mr Mamkoottam also added that this could largely be attributed to the fact that the recruiting firms were not conversant with the salient features of the curriculum. Also running two courses multiplied their work. All their administrative processes, right from recruitment to classroom teaching to placements and examinations were being duplicated. Hence, it was an administrative decision to merge this course with their flagship MBA programme.
Furthermore, Mr Mamkoottam mentioned that the administration felt that the time period of five years was sufficient to review the progress of the course. Also it wanted to ensure that the popularity of their flagship course did not hamper the students of the MBA-MS course. They have observed that the profile of the students applying for both the courses is much the same but most companies preferred students from the full time course. So, the MBA-MS has been merged with their flagship MBA programme in the interest of students.
As per sources, currently, there are 226 seats for the course and the institute received around 3,000 additional applications as compared to last year. Mamkoottam informs that students who had enrolled into the MBA-MS course prior to this amalgamation shall continue to pursue the existing curriculum (of MBA-MS) till they appear for their final examinations in 2012.
Talking about the merging of the two courses, Kuriakose Mamkoottam, dean, Faculty of Management Studies says, “The MBA-MS course was introduced five years back to specifically serve the needs of the services sector. It was meant to be a niche programme for a niche market. However, we faced some problems on the placement front as corporates had their reservations in terms of recruiting students from this new course. This could largely be attributed to the fact that the recruiting firms were not conversant with the salient features of the curriculum. Also running two courses multiplied our work. All our administrative processes, right from recruitment to classroom teaching to placements and examinations were being duplicated. Hence, it was an administrative decision to merge this course with our flagship MBA programme.”
Mamkoottam goes on to add that the administration felt that the time period of five years was sufficient to review the progress of the course. “Also it wanted to ensure that the popularity of our flagship course did not hamper the students of the MBA-MS course. We have observed that the profile of the students applying for both the courses is much the same but most companies preferred students from the full time course. So, the MBA-MS has been merged with our flagship MBA programme in the interest of students.”
