Low number of females opt for IIMA’s e-PGP program

Bucking the trend of an increasing number of female aspirants signing up for MBA programs, IIM Ahmedabad’s inaugural batch of the new two-year e-Post Graduate Program in Management (ePGP) for working executives and entrepreneurs that combines online and classroom learning has just 2 girls enrolled.

The rest of the cohort comprises 51 men. The selection to the program was from a vast pool of applicants through rigorous admission criteria. About 79% of the batch is from the engineering stream with BE or BTech. degrees. The female presence in the 2-year PGP program in the 2017-19 batch was 28%. The Institute also saw 50% female candidates registered for its Post-Graduate Programme in Food and Agribusiness Management (PGP-FABM) program this academic year.

IIMA Director Ashish Nanda had stated that the increased percentage of women students has been achieved without giving extra credits or holding specific quotas on account of gender. Instead, it had gone in for a combination of active recruitment of women candidates, encouraging discipline diversity of students called for interviews and paying attention to holistic leadership potential among applicants being interviewed.

He had expressed the hope that a broad mix across gender will contribute to a richer learning environment at the Institute.

The classes are held from Thursday to Saturday in the evening from 06.45 pm-10.00 pm. On Sunday the timings are from 12.15 pm to 03.30 pm.

Hughes Global Education, an online learning solutions provider is the technology partner for the e-PGP program that marks IIMA’s entry into online education.At the launch of the program in January this year, IIMA Director Ashish Nanda had stated that the program has been designed to enable entrepreneurs and working executives to add value to their professional functioning and to enable them to gain knowledge in various areas of management.

“This is the wave of future. This course is targeted at junior, mid and senior-level professionals and entrepreneurs seeking skills and strategies to take their organisations to the next level,” he said. The fees of the program is pegged at Rs 17 lakh (excluding taxes) for the two-year period.

IIMA has announced that the next batch will be selected on the basis of the Common Admission Test (CAT) or Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) scores and those interested should apply for CAT 2017.

Candidates seeking admission to the program should be graduates with at least 50% aggregate and minimum three years of work experience. They will have to appear for either GMAT, CAT or IIM Admission Test (IAT) the scores of which will be taken into consideration for admission.

The compulsory core courses will be dealt with during the first year, followed by a bouquet of elective courses in the second year. Three campus modules are planned as an integral part of the program. The course which is imparted over more than 600 classroom sessions, provides the participants with leadership skills for the knowledge economy, through an innovative curriculum.

During the first year, the programme curriculum focuses on equipping the participants with managerial decision-making abilities; Leadership capabilities; Understanding of the functional areas of management; Understanding of the economic and regulatory trends; Varied analytical tools and techniques and General management orientation.

On completion of the core courses, each participant will need to choose electives in the various functional areas of Marketing, Finance, Strategy, Operations Management, Human Resource Management and IT Management, as well as cross-functional areas. Placement support will not be provided.

The teaching approach will be highly interactive using the technological capabilities of the channel. The pedagogy will be a blend of lectures, case studies, online lectures, projects, peer to peer learning, self- learning and simulations. Mentoring by faculty and some access to learning resources of IIMA will also be made available. HGEIL will ensure uninterrupted technical support in conducting online classes, attendance, quizzes, etc.

The classes are held from Thursday to Saturday in the evening from 06.45 pm-10.00 pm. On Sunday the timings are from 12.15 pm to 03.30 pm.