Demand for business edu declining in US, rising in Asia

Hyderabad: While the overall demand for business education has remained stable globally, its demand has been declining in the US but picking up in Asia, said experts.
“The overall demand for business education is remarkably stable on an aggregate basis … what we are seeing though is a geographical shift. In the US... there have been changes in the visa regime and we have seen a very sharp decline in the number of non-US students applying for US B-Schools…on the other hand, we are seeing very strong growth in demand for business education, especially MBA, in markets in Asia which are in high growth mode,” said Sangeet Chowfla, president and CEO, Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), that administers the GMAT exam.
He was speaking at a panel discussion on – Strategizing For The Future of Business Education – held as a part of the Strategic Management Society’s India Special Conference being held at ISB Hyderabad.
He pointed out that business education is in demand in Asia as the economies are in a growth mode. “The companies that are in growth mode tend to go for MBA hires whereas the ones going for cost cutting tend to opt for specialised hires,” he added. Meanwhile, speaking about the rise in business education being imparted via the digital platform, he pointed out that it is not going to impact the experiential learning that campuses offer.
ISB dean Rajendra Srivastava said ISB too is focusing on blended learning, which is a combination of classroom and digital platform, in certain programmes, especially for senior executives. The SMS conference saw participation of 350 strategy scholars, of which 150 were international participants. As many as 160 business schools were represented in the conference, out of which around 100 B-Schools were from outside India. The conference was started in 2008 by late Professor C K Prahalad who was instrumental in shaping corporate strategy.