While the brunt of the current economic slowdown witnessed in the country been felt most by the innumerable B-Schools who have had poor campus job offers so far, the postgraduate satellite courses of XLRI school of business & human resources have been, contrary to expectations, seeing a good demand even at this juncture.

Speaking to FE on Saturday, XLRI associate dean, satellite programme, M Srimannarayana said, ?As on March 31, 2009 we received more than 1,000 online applications for admissions into our 16th postgraduate certificate in business management (PGCBM) batch and the eighth post graduate certificate in human resource management (PGCHRM) batch; this indicates that the present business scenario does not affect satellite programmes admission.”

According to the associate dean, the B-School will be screening the profiles of the 1,000 applicants for its two satellite courses (PGCBM & PGCHRM) and would finally be selecting a maximum of 300 candidates as its first batch for the current year.

“Observing the current economic situation, we thought nobody would come to enroll for our satellite courses which have a course fee of Rs 1.95 lakh, but we have received 1,000 applications,” said Srimannarayana, adding that perhaps the applicants thought that in a weak job market, having a management qualification offered them a better job security than otherwise. The B-School which has been the first in the country to start satellite courses in management for working executives in 2002, today runs five postgraduate certificate courses, and its PGCBM and PGCHRM courses are by far more popular among the five it offers, with admissions taking place twice a year.

Having started later, the demand for XLRI’s other three specialised satellite courses, post graduate certificate in logistics & supply chain management (LSCM), post graduate certificate in retail management (RM) and post graduate certificate in sales & marketing management (SMM) are on the lower side, with admissions open to them only once a year. Though the institute has, with effect from January 2009, reduced the duration of its satellite programmes from 14 months to a year, the acceptability of all its satellite courses has been so high that although the minimum work experience required for admission has been kept only two years, the average length of experience of the 200 plus candidates who participated in its last business management satellite programme (PGCBM) had been around 8 years while that of the 100 plus who had participated in its human resource management course (PGCHRM) had been higher at around 9.5 years.

Asked what feedback the institute got from students who completed the courses, the associate dean, satellite programme, said that while many, who did not have any prior management qualification, said they could now relate to the managerial roles they were playing in their organisations, for many others the certificate gave them a job hopping opportunity or a jump in their existing organisation.

Altogether 409 students representing the streams of business management (BM), human resource management (HRM), logistics and supply chain management (LSCM), sales and marketing management (SMM) and retail management (RM) received certificates at the graduation ceremony of the B-School’s satellite programmes held on Saturday in the presence of Usha Martin group chairman B K Jhawar.