Three-year part-time MBA courses at the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi University may soon be converted to Executive MBA programmes of two-years’ duration. A proposal to redesign the part-time MBA courses at FMS was approved by the Academic Council of the University in a closed-door meeting late evening on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at the Vice-Chancellors office. However, the decision will be presented before the university’s Executive Council meeting on Wednesday for final approval.

As part of the proposal, the two part-time MBA courses at FMS, namely MBA (Part-time) and MBA (Healthcare Administration) will now be called MBA (Executive) and MBA (Executive) Healthcare Administration respectively. It has also been proposed that the duration of these two courses will be reduced from three years to two years, and the fees increased from Rs 11,000 to Rs 50,000 per year. The student intake in the MBA (part-time) course will come down to 172 from the current 232 and in the Healthcare Administration programme, it will increase from 37 to 42.

According to a senior official at FMS, these changes reflect the decreasing interest in part-time MBA courses at FMS. Tarun Manchanda, a Part-time MBA student at FMS who dropped out of the class of 2011-14 in the first year itself told PaGaLGuY, A three-year duration for a part-time MBA becomes difficult to follow for working people. It is generally seen that over the course of three years many students look for newer job responsibilities and are often forced to leave the programme in between. The change in the duration will be a welcome move.

The institute has also proposed increasing the required experience criterion for pursuing the part-time MBA from three years to five years. There will also be a mandatory 75% attendance requirement for part-time MBA students from this year in the course, and they will have to clear all the course papers within a maximum of four years.

Graduates from arts, commerce or science streams with minimum 45% marks in undergraduation along with five years of work experience can apply for these part-time courses at FMS. For the Healthcare Administration course, the candidates should have a bachelors degree in medicine, dental sciences, bio-technology, genomics, genetics, nursing or bio-engineering.