Global MBA, but at a cost always

STUDYING ABROAD: Getting a management degree on foreign soil may not be a very attractive option.

Payal Shah, a 26-year-old senior executive, corporate communications at Travel Corporation of India, still recollects the struggle she underwent to land a job in the US, after finishing an MA in marketing from the US-based Emerson college.

"It took me around six to seven months to land a job. Till then I was working in Market Research (MR) companies in Boston, earning around $15 an hour. I finally landed an option with an MR company in Boston," she says.

For Jasleen Gupta, doing her MA in marketing from Nottingham University in UK, was a different encounter. "There is a bit of racism, although much of it happens outside the University campus," she says. According to Gupta,even if one were to land a job in the UK, "Indians get paid a notch lesser than the locals."

Doing an MBA abroad is really not about a fast ticket to riches and revelry. Says Priyadarshan Patankar, a consultant to Government of India, who has done his MBA from Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve, rated as one of the top 25 B-schools in the US "The moment you get admission for an MBA overseas, the perception is that you immediately land a plum job. That's really not the case. The competition is just as intense and getting work permits is also a challenge."

With an average salary of $60,000 a year, a person typically saves around $2,000. This means it takes atleast two to five years to recover the amount that is spent on the education since there is also a heavy loan burden that many students incur.

And if one is to return to India to land a job, the recovery period could be triple that time-frame. The cost of doing a post-graduate study in the UK, for instance, works out to around Rs 18 lakhs which also includes food and living expenses.

"In India there is atleast some support system for a weak student. The faculties take extra efforts to coach and mentor. Out there it is much harsher,"says Patankar.

Faculties may not necessarily be keen in spending too much of their academic time behind upgrading the abilities of a weak student. And education counsellors say that students have to guard themselves against falling prey to grapevine and myths that often do the rounds.

Says Vinayak Kamath,director, Geebee educational services, "In the US having a mere academic track-record is no guarantee for an admission into an MBA campus. They expect atleast two to three years of supervisory experience in a company."

This is because in the west MBA is looked at as a mid-career degree where they hone the business skills which the students have acquired through work experience and other factors.

However, if a student was to still get an admission into one of the universities, life after that could be full of uncertainties. "Most of them end up getting start up jobs," says Kamath.

This is because large and established companies do not appreciate an MBA degree which was acquired without a pre-qualification experience.

That's because the message such universities are sending is that they are unable to attract quality students from all nationalities and therefore has to rely on Indian students for its sustenance.

Such MBA degrees do not get any weightage from employers even in the home country. Kamath says that doing an external campus programme, whereby the university in Asia has an affiliation with a US university, is also not an acceptable idea.

"Getting a degree from such universities also does not give an added weightage to the students in the employment market," he says.