Q&A: Saji Gopinath, Director, TA Pai Management Institute

'Manipal University will take us abroad'

When its peers went international almost a decade ago, the 25-year old TA Pai Management Institute is still charting out plans for an overseas foray. Saji Gopinath, Director, TA PMI, discusses the institute’s future plans with Pradeesh Chandran. Excerpts:

Why did you not expand earlier?
We run Post Graduate Programme in Management (equivalent to an MBA) and our course is accredited by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU). As per AIU guidelines, institutes like ours cannot start campuses in other parts of the country. So we are in active discussions with Manipal University to design an academic model where the ownership of the centres will be with Manipal and TAPMI will provide and support the management programmes. Manipal University has centres in Malasiya and Dubai we will start TAPMI centres by following the same model.

Does that mean no international partnerships for you to set up campuses?
We are not planning to partner with any international B-school for setting up campuses in India. However, we are planning to go aggressive in our student exchange programme. We see exchange programmes a a one way business wherein, students from India pay huge fee to go abroad. We believe exchange is a two way process. Accreditation will give us a level playing field.

What accreditation is this?
We have applied for accreditation from AACSB, which is world’s number one accreditation for B-schools. No other B-school in the country has got it and we expect we will get it by April. We have exchange programmes with foreign universities and post accreditation we will go for more such programmes.

What changes is TAPMI bringing in course wise?
We understand the need for research programmes in management and are planning to come out with a executive PhD programme. Again, we don’t have a Fellowship Programme in Management which is equivalent to PhD. Initially we will start a programme in collaboration with Manipal University. Individuals will be taken in TAPMI and will be registered with Manipal University. We see demand from experienced people, who are working in various industries.

Please elaborate how it will work?
We are planning to take 30 individuals for first batch of executive PhD programme out of which 15 will be fresh graduates with an experience of less than five years and the remaining 15 will be employees with around 10 years of experience. We have not finalised the fee structure yet. We need a subsidised model to attract more youngsters to research. We are planning to provide stipend to graduates who have experience of less than five years. Experienced people who want to do PhD can afford a paid model. We will utilise the fee from experienced people to provide scholarship and stipend for youngsters. We are in touch with the government for some funding for the programme.

You are training government employees in e-governance. How has it been?
We started a one year residential diploma programme in partnership with National Institute of Smart Government (NISG) to train government employees in various e-governance programmes. The students who were unemployed got high level of placements with companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, IBM among others. Fee for the course is Rs 5 lakh for government employees wherein, Rs 4 lakh is provided by the central government while remaining Rs 1 lakh is provided by the state government. This year we plan to start two batches in as for many students, government sanctions for the course is getting delayed due to protocols.