The Toronto-based Schulich School of Business of the York University may not wait for the passage of the bill allowing foreign direct investment (FDI) in higher education before it starts operations in India. The Canadian school, which has been working on setting up a campus in Hyderabad in collaboration with the GMR Group will instead run a twinning programme approved by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) if the FDI act remains logjammed.

“We plan to start our first MBA batch in 2013. If by then the FDI act is passed, we will run our own full-fledged programme. If not, then we will seek AICTE approval for running a twinning programme through our Indian partner the GMR Group,” Schulich’s Dean Dr Dezso J Horvath told PaGaLGuY over phone.

The school will debut with a first MBA batch of 60 students of which one-third would be international students, he said. Admissions will begin in mid-2012, the deadlines being earmarked for August and September with an eye on a January 2013 intake. One will have to apply to the programme using their GMAT scores, application essays and two recommendation letters apart from academic transcripts and detailed resumes. A minimum of three years of work experience would be mandatory.

If run as a twinning programme, students of the MBA programme will have to spend the first year studying in India and the second at Schulich’s Toronto campus. If however the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill is passed by the Indian parliament by 2013, the school will run as a full-fledged Schulich campus delivering both the years of the MBA from within India.

“As India’s corporations become successful globally, they are going to need managers with global management training. Currently India’s business schools have Indian faculty teaching Indian curriculum to prepare managers to manage in the Indian environment. Schulich would be teaching a global curriculum with nearly 20 specialisations using global faculty flown down from Canada to create managers which companies such as the Tatas and Reliance can recruit to manage their global operations. So in that sense Schulich would not compete with Indian b-schools but will complement them,” Dr Horvath said.

Schulich currently runs a twinning programme along with Mumbai’s SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), which it shall terminate to make way for the Hyderabad operations in 2013. The one last SP Jain-Schulich twinning batch will however be admitted for the January 2012 intake.

The Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill is one of the half-dozen education-related bills due to be introduced in the Winter Session of the Indian parliament. The Bill was scheduled to be tabled in the Monsoon session during August, but was postponed following the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption agitation taking centerstage.

Apart from Schulich, the UK-based University of Strathclyde Business School and Lancaster University Management School have already started operations in India through collaborations with SKIL Infrastructure and GD Goenka World Institute respectively. While Strathclyde SKIL Business School is located in Greater Noida, the Goenka-Lancaster programme is delivered in Gurgaon. Each of Schulich, Strathclyde and Lancaster features in the Financial Times’ top 100 global MBA programmes rankings.