More Delhi University departments offering MBA-equivalent degrees are restructuring their courses to be more attractive to the industry. After the Faculty of Management Studies and Sri Ram College of Commerce, it is Department of Commerce under Delhi School of Economics (DSE), Department of Business Economics and the Department of Financial Studies that are contemplating facelifts to their management programmes.
DSE is looking at renaming the Master of International Business (MIB) to Master of Management in International Business and the Master of Human Resources and Organisational Development (MHROD) course to Master of Management in Human Resources and Organisational Development.
On the other hand, the Department of Business Economics and Department of Financial Studies want to merge their departments into one and call it the Faculty of Finance and Business Economics. While at it, the department will also update the course structures of their Master of Business Economics (MBE) and Master of Finance and Control (MFC) programmes.
According to senior official at DSE, renaming MIB and MHROD would help in changing the perception that companies hold towards the courses’ students. Typically, the graduates of these courses looking for jobs have to do a lot of explaining to companies that their education is management-related, the official said. In fact, some public sector companies at the time of recruiting have also asked students for a letter written by the school notifying that the course is equivalent to MBA. According to the official, the name change will help solve this problem.
Both MIB and MHROD have 73 seats each and the candidates are selected on the basis of their Common Admission Test (CAT) scores followed by group discussions and interviews. The name change will not affect the fees charged, added the official.
The departments of business economics and financial studies had submitted their proposal about a merger two years ago. The merger is pending the approvals of the University Academic Council and vice chancellor. We have developed a vision for a merged department. The merged entity will bring together a lot of synergies although the courses will remain the same. In fact, the global crisis has actually shown us that finance without economics is not very helpful. Keeping the industry requirement, we would like to strengthen the quantitative skills of the students so that they can analyse problems better. An overall roadmap towards merger of these two departments has already been created and submitted to the University, said Prof Vijay Kumar Kaul, head of the business economics department.
Kaul also informed that there was no fee hike plan for the courses and the count of seats will also remain the same. Both the courses have started accepting CAT scores for admission since 2011. Once, the integration was done, the department also wanted to introduce a new course called International Financial Economics, Kaul added.