The Faculty of Management Studies at Delhi University is said to be regaining its position as a leading B-school in India over the past few years. FMS Dean J K Mitra, however, tells Kalpana Pathak that the B-school was always a top-quality one. He reveals that the institute is also considering a thorough revision of the syllabus. Edited excerpts of the interview:
How do you expect the placements to be in the current financial slowdown?
Placements will be good but I see the current slowdown more as a corrective measure. The students have started dictating which companies should come to campus. This slowdown will help in making the students less arrogant.
What new plans do you have for FMS?
In the last eight years, there has been very serious thought in terms of what are we doing on MBA education and most people think that we have diverted from our original goal of providing business leaders. We are considering a thorough revision of the syllabus, since its inception. The new syllabus could be in place by 2010.
FMS has not increased its fee for years now. Any plan to do so?
FMS has lowest annual fee in the world -- Rs 9,500 per year for the two-year MBA programme. The expenses here are very minimal. We are not increasing the fee as we don't want people to feel that education at FMS is beyond their reach. We would change the fee in the next few years provided we do something fundamentally different like paying for travel and scholarship for the candidates who go abroad for research.
But FMS does not have a corpus. Do you plan to create one?
FMS is looking at creating a corpus on the basis of alumni contribution and other things when we are ready to move into our integrated campus in south Delhi. We are currently split between north and south campuses and we would be moving into an integrated campus which will be a modern and substantially different place for us. We try to generate more resources and are not only able to cover our costs and do some of the special things that we require, but also to contribute to the university.
Any plan to go abroad and set up a campus?
Though FMS has received many such proposals, it cannot go and set up a campus abroad or even outside the union territory of Delhi. We are like B-schools in the West, which are a part of the university.