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Weekend reading (June 19-25): Incoming batch profiles, tuition fee waiver against equity, Rajaratnam trials

Weekend

(Photo credit: meddygarnet)

Engineers continue to be the largest group in the 2-year MBA-equivalent PGP programs at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). While IIM Bangalore’s class of 2013 will have 91.32% engineers, at IIM Calcutta’s batch comprises 95% engineers.

The Times of India reports about IIM Bangalore that the new batch has 85 women compared to 78 last year, comprising 22.25% of the batch. The story adds,

As many as 144 students — or almost 37% — come with degrees from the elite group of institutions — the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). All, save one, are engineers.

Majority of the 297 male students are in the age group of 25 to 30 years. Among female candidates, 63 of the total 85 are between 20 and 24 years. The youngest student is all of 20 years and the oldest is 34 years. Eight students are from overseas.

(Complete article)

At IIM Calcutta however, the percentage of women has decreased from 7% last year to 5% for the new batch, reports an Indian Express story. According to the story,

Officials said the institute has been struggling to have more diversity in its students and a parity in terms of gender but blamed the fewer presence of female students on strong quantitative bias of the Common Admission Test.

This year, about 95 per cent students who have taken admission have engineering background. There has been an increase in the number of students with work experience too. About 70 per cent students joining IIM Calcutta this year have more than one years of work experience, said Professor Janakiraman Moorthy, Chairperson (Admissions) at IIM Calcutta.

(Complete article)

Across the globe, Harvard Business School on June 24 reported that its incoming class of 2013 will have the largest percentage of women ever in the history of the school. Writes The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University,

Of the 918 students in the MBA Class of 2013, 39 percent will be female. In the two previous classes, women comprised 36 percent of the enrolled students.

The admission and yield rates have remained relatively constant in recent years. 12 percent of 9,134 applicants were admitted to the Class of 2013, compared with 11 percent of 9,524 applicants for 2012. The yield rate rose slightly from 89 percent to 90 percent.

(View interactive chart of HBS class of 2013)

B-schools and entreprensurship

Youngsters looking to be entrepreneurs tend to avoid studying business degrees because of the high tuition cost. Clarkson University, a tech-oriented university in New York is attempting to offset this cost-benefit conundrum by offering to waiver its undergraduate business program tuition in exchange for a stake in the student’s venture. Businessweek, which covered the story, illustrated the example of a student who gave away 10% of his company to Clarkson University (in a phased manner, giving 1.25% for each semester he attended at the university) in exchange for tuition fee waiver, academic mentorship and office space for his startup. However,

This type of agreement can be a risky model for some schools, especially if the companies do not end up taking off, Greene (Patricia Greene, an entrepreneurship professor at Babson College) says. In general, few of the early business school incubators that deployed this ownership model ended up with a significant payoff, she says.

Clarkson Dean Sugrue says the agreement the school worked out clearly outlines the expectations the university has for Turcotte and the nature of their relationship. The contract also addresses potentially thorny issues, such as what to do in case one of the parties wants to opt out of the agreement, and it contains a termination clause that takes effect if the student’s business fails.

(Full article)

Those following the Galleon Group trials in the US may like to read this best ever piece in The New Yorker about the Raj Rajaratnam investigations and America’s inability to take on Wall Street crime more effectively.

And yet, nearly three years after the financial crisis, Wall Street still relies on reckless practices to create wealth. An investment banker recently described the meltdown, with some chagrin, as ‘a speed bump’. The S.E.C. remains so starved of resources that its budget this year falls short of Raj Rajaratnams net worth at the time of his arrest. The agency lacks the technology to keep track of the enormous volume and lightning speed of algorithmic trades, like the ones that caused last Mays ‘flash crash’ of the stock market. The market has become more of an exclusive gambling club for the very rich than a level playing field open to the ordinary investor.

(You really should read the full article)