SP Jain School of Global Management—which has campuses in Mumbai, Sydney, Singapore and Dubai—will soon open its fifth campus, in London. The business school is known for its tri-city model of education, wherein students have the option to study in three campuses. “This opens up more job opportunities for students because they not only study on the campus, but network as well with industry and with the locals,” says Nitish Jain, president, SP Jain School of Global Management. In an interview with FE’s Vikram Chaudhary, he added that business schools must go global because corporates have gone global.
Excerpts:
Does the word ‘global’ in the name SP Jain Global imply that you will expand only globally, and won’t have another India campus outside of Mumbai?
That’s correct. The London will be our fifth campus. Our philosophy is that the business world has gone global, and therefore business schools should also go global because companies need people who can work in a global team and exploit global opportunities. In fact, our unique selling point is our global campuses.
Students studying at any of our campuses learn a lot outside the classroom. We make efforts to immerse students in the culture and the business world of the city/region they are studying in.
In your global campuses, do you predominantly get Indian-origin students?
It depends on the programme. For example, in the BBA, we have students from 20 different countries, but in the global MBA programme we predominantly have Indian students. At the end of the day, we are a global Indian school. We also know that our brand is not as strong as the world’s top business school brands, so attracting students from other nationalities for the global MBA programme is tougher.
For us to attract Indian students (for the global MBA programme) is easy because the brand is very well known amongst Indians.
Can students study at all your campuses, maybe a semester each?
Our programmes are structured in a way that students need to study in at least three campuses. That is a unique point about us—a student can study not just in three campuses, but in three continents during the course of the degree. This also opens up more job opportunities for students, because they not only study on the campus, but the network as well with industry and with the locals.
Is there any connection between SP Jain Global and the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), the Mumbai-based business school? Do students or industry get confused?
SP Jain is the name of my late grandfather, and he was the one who was the patron of SPJIMR, so we gave the name SP Jain to them, and not the other round. SP Global, on the other hand, is a trademark owned by us. It could be confusing to some, but it’s no different than IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore or IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur. Those who need to know the difference, know the difference.
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