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Monday, March 18: Back to Business

After two days of sightseeing, I've started to grasp what life in Hyderabad is like. Mumbai is too gargantuan to absorb anything beyond a single neighborhood, and we spent too little time in Pune to appreciate the city's character. Business and technology dominate Hyderabad. Microsoft's largest campus outside the United States is here, and the CEO of Adobe is from here. Aside from the historic center, most of the buildings look new and filled with commerce. The roads are treacherous. I ventured outside the hotel compound on foot just once--to check out a local supermarket. Even then, I dared because I didn't have to cross any streets.

For our first campus visit, we took the bus to University of Hyderabad. In 1998 U of H launched the first study abroad program for students visiting India. The Study in India Program (SIP) has grown to welcome some 150 students from the U.S. and Nordic countries each year for semester-long or intensive summer programs. They are well-equipped to accommodate foreign students with a specialized international dorm that includes air conditioning and other amenities most Indian students do without.

One of hosts at University of Hyderabad greets us.

A double room at the international students dorm

The combination of steady heat and spread-out campus necessitated a bus ride to visit some of the academic buildings. For some reason they took us to the communications department so we could tour the audio and visual recording studios. An enthusiastic faculty member guided us around the student radio station. Some members of our group asked incredibly detailed questions about the radio's schedule, ability to take questions from call-in listeners, and web streaming capability. I couldn't tell if they genuinely had an interest in such minutia or if we've all been conditioned to show polite interest.

The federal government founded the University of Hyderabad in 1974. Despite its relatively young campus, the buildings looked run down and the landscape dreary. Our next stop would provide a revealing contrast. Indian School of Business, or ISB, was founded in 2001 by Indian alumni of McKinsey. Unlike in the United States most of the top business schools in India are standalone institutions. ISB is entirely privately funded. Tuition for a one-year MBA program runs to $40,000.
ISB's modern architecture
We ate lunch with faculty members in a private room off the dining hall. Then, we assembled in a classroom where an administrator gave us an overview of the school's research-driven mission. ISB models its curriculum on U.S. business schools and was the first South Asian institution to receive accreditation from the U.S. business school association. What ISB lacks are students from outside India. They claimed that 98% of their graduates receive job offers at about three times the salary they were making before they started the program. Impressive as their record is, it's hard to see why a student who doesn't intend to work in India after business school would choose ISB.
Reshmi Mitra, our academic facilitator, moderates a discussion with ISB students.

We stayed at ISB for over four hours. They had organized several sessions for us, including a conversation with students and a discussion with the dean. The narrow focus on business means that IHP students would be unlikely to benefit from an exchange. As a standalone, niche graduate school, however, ISB holds relevant lessons for IHP. Their dean described revenue-generating strategies to commercialize faculty expertise through executive education and corporate consulting. When conducting long-range planning at the IHP, we often tell ourselves that we're not business people, so it's instructive to learn how actual MBAs approach higher education administration.
The dean of the school receives the requisite cup of tea from a uniformed server.
When we returned to the hotel, it was time for dinner. We processed our observations from the different institutions and reviewed the remaining days on the schedule. On the one hand, it makes sense to maximize our visit to such a distant country. On the other hand, we may be reaching saturation soon and are looking forward to returning to our pedestrian routines in the United States.





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