Centrestage - In conversation with SP Jain School of Global Management

Center Stage, in conversation with the S.B. Janss School of Global Management.

Today, technology is disrupting everything around us, including how we learn, where we learn, And who teaches us? With a view to creating tomorrow's leaders, SP Jain Global, the technology-led business school with campuses in Dubai, Singapore, Sydney, and Mumbai, offers a plethora of undergraduate, postgraduate, professional, and doctoral programs. It is amongst a handful of schools that has embraced technology technology to craft unique learning experiences for its students. Little wonder that the school figures in the top league in the various global surveys on higher studies done by the likes of The Economist, Financial Times, Times Wall Street Journal, to name a few. This international business school has clocked an impressive growth in the last 14 years. And the credit for that singularly goes to Nitish Jain. His vision to offer multi-campus learning model seems to have won the school a well-deserved place under the sun. To learn more about his school's game plan, as also to find out whether India can become the hub for higher education, CNBC TV18's AB Ravi caught up with the 58-year-old Nitish Jain at his Mumbai campus. And this is what Mr. Jain has to say to a series of questions posed by Ravi. Take a look.

Mr. Jain, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Ravi.

Mr. Jain, if I may begin by asking you, recently your school's flagship program, Global MBA, was ranked 4th in the world by Times and WSJ in the higher education survey. Earlier, Economist, Financial Times, CMOS also ranked the school very high. So winning has become a habit at SP Jain. The question I want to ask you is, what are the factors that go into your school getting higher rank year after year?

So the ranking publications have many factors that go into the ranking. The latest ranking where we were ranked 4th in the world had 20 different factors. They included student outcomes, okay, that is what sort of jobs they got and what sort of salaries they got. It included our faculty, what sort of qualifications our faculty had, how many faculty per student. It included several other factors— research, diversity of both students and faculty, etc. So it's a very comprehensive ranking, and it is not any one thing. But the one element if I can highlight though is student outcomes. That has the 38% ranking.

So good ranking means good campus selection, the students get selected.

Yes.

So how are you preparing your students for the future of business administration?

You know, for our flagship MBA program, we determine what sort of job they will get in the first one month of their joining us.

Okay.

And that is a conversation that we have with the student. What are their aspirations? What are their background? And so on and so forth. And then the rest of the program is really focused around achieving their goals. They may have a CV that lacks certain skills. And so then we help them through this process to upgrade their CV, to upgrade their skills and so on and so forth.

So basically, what are the feedback you are getting from the corporate recruiters about your students, about your course?

Well, I think our course is global. Students study in 3 different countries to get their degree, and hence they know how business is done differently in different countries. So for example, how business is done in China is very different than how you do business in India.

True.

Or if you do business in Australia, it's very different than India. And so our students are trained to be global, to work in a global team, to understand how people from different cultures behave and interact. That is very highly sought after, and SP Jain students get picked up by global companies year after year.

In terms of average salary, are they getting better and has it progressively improved over the period of time? And how do you compare other business schools in terms of salary?

Our average salary of students, if I say it in rupee terms, because a lot of our students get jobs in Singapore and Dubai, but if I convert it into one currency which is INR, it is ₹25 lakhs a rupee.

Oh, that's good.

Very good. It is higher than almost any other school in—

That's the average salary you're talking about.

And somebody could be getting— Some get much more. And the average starting salary when they join our program is about 7 lakhs. So they get 3 times after doing the program, after a 1-year program that they do with us.

This 1-year program takes them to Sydney, Dubai, and Australia, and Dubai, and Singapore.

Yes. They study in 3 countries. They can't decide that I only want to study in Singapore. Okay. Because the whole global model is our philosophy.

Yeah, okay.

And so, therefore, students need to study in these 3 different countries and there is a huge component of global learning in each of these 3 cities. And of course, really deep cultural differences, exposure to the local politics, exposure to local business environments, understanding different business frameworks. They actually go and visit different companies in each of these places, and they have guest speakers from each of these places. So one is the faculty in the classroom, and then in each city, every 2 weeks, they have a mover and shaker who comes and talks to them about how business is done in Singapore or in Sydney or in Dubai. And that's a tremendous learning opportunity.

So are you preparing your students to take up jobs or to become an entrepreneur?

Both, both, both. Where do you see? Because currently a lot of our students look to take a job at the end because they need the money, they've taken loans, they want to repay the loans. But after 3 to 4 years, a huge percentage of them become entrepreneurs. Okay. And so that may be a yearning that they have, but because of constraints that they don't become an entrepreneur right off the program, but they become an entrepreneur within the 4 years, which is huge, it's very exciting. But I'm looking forward for the day, Ravi, when a student gets an idea, an entrepreneurial idea, when he's studying with us and drops out to say, I can't wait to do this, and becomes— starts his own business.

You started SP Jain Global not in India but in Dubai in 2004. My question is, why Dubai, not in Mumbai first?

Well, you see, at the end of the program, students look for great jobs. Okay. In the year 2004, Dubai was a really booming city. And there were hardly any quality business schools. So we set up in Dubai. Our students from the very first cohort got picked up by leading companies there, okay, and got fantastic jobs at UAE salaries, which is twice that of Indian salaries. So naturally, the next cohort was already pre-sold because they wanted the same sort of jobs.

Okay, that was the thought process behind it.

That was the thought. So we also had examined London and Boston and all these other famous places, but we said we will be too drowned by the local universities. Dubai offered us an opportunity to stand out.

Interesting, actually.

Yeah, and we capitalized on that.

And we had a booming economy, capitalized on that. So if I were to ask you, so how did you go on building brand Spigen Global in Australia, in Singapore, in Dubai, and also in India. Was it easy? What kind of investment have you made in technology, people, branding, etc.?

See, Ravi, it's all about differentiation.

It's about 14 years this business is.

We started in 2004. In 2019, it is our 15th year. We've just started our 15th year. So we are that young. We're a millennial kid, if you like. But how have we gained reputation in these other countries? It's because of our razor-sharp focus on differentiation, on the most relevant factor, which is the sort of education that we deliver. The focus of education is not so much on knowledge, but on skills development, on competencies, on character. These are the— this is the focus of education today at SP Jain.

Your multi-campus learning, what was the thought process behind this multi-campus learning? How much has it benefited your students and the people who are recruiting your students?

All our students actually are required to go to 3 different countries to do their program. That is mandated because the global learning is central to our philosophy.

Okay.

And the question therefore is, you know, which you asked, is why?

Why, yeah.

At the turn of the century, the internet was making new business opportunities available. A small garage in Bangalore was now a global company because all their clients were global., right? So I think that requires a different sort of person who's comfortable, who is not— who's not tolerating a global company environment but is thriving on that environment. He enjoys working in a global team, which means he gets used to working with people of different nationalities. He knows how business is done differently. He knows what to talk to an American, he knows what to talk to an Arab, he knows what to talk to a Chinese, and he knows how to get the deal done. And that's a special skill.

So coming back to the special skill, what about faculty? Are you being able to attract the right kind of faculty? Generally, there's always a dearth of talent in the teaching industry.

So, Ravi, we have 4 campuses, okay? Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney. These are the 4 campuses. When we recruit faculty, we tell them, where do you want to bring up your kids? Someone will say, I love Singapore, I want to bring up my kids in Singapore. We say, done, you live in Singapore. Someone else likes India, someone else likes Sydney, someone else likes Dubai. Dubai, zero tax, a lot of people love Dubai because no tax. Yeah. So, We say, okay, you stay where you want, but you're part of the SP Jain system now. And because we are so flexible on that front, we've been able to attract faculty from top Ivy League universities. Today we have faculty from 18 different countries. It's a very global team. It's not just Indian. So, we have faculty from the US, from the UK.

Because you are paying top dollar salary.

We pay market salaries and in fact even maybe higher than market salaries because we want the best and because we hire the faculty for their teaching prowess.

Okay, what are the ELOs?

EL stands for Engaged Learning. Okay. We have two formats of engaged learning. One is in classroom, we call it ELC.

Okay.

And one is online, we call that ELO.

Okay.

Engaged learning is learning By adopting the Socratic method of pedagogy. What that means is that nobody is allowed to use a PPT and you teach. That is not allowed in our school.

As they say, death by PPT.

Death by PPT, right? Exactly. So, we— faculty ask questions and they keep asking questions. To get students to think, to engage, to critically analyze, to work in groups and create stuff. And that is what we call engaged learning. And we have now these classrooms with every student who has a tablet, and the tablet has our own custom software that allows faculty and students to engage in this question-answer sessions. So it is not just one student answering, all students answer on their tablets.

So you, do you feel that this is very transformational and it will make students future-ready?

Absolutely, because every question is linked to a skill. So this is linked to critical thinking, this is linked to creativity, and we have a phone app which we call Scoreboard that they can actually see how they are on critical thinking, creativity, communication, etc., and then they can work on that particular skill. So that is so exciting, it's the first in the world.

Okay, very exciting. The discussion is getting interesting and interesting, but on that note, we can take a short break. Stay tuned.

There are a number of unique features when it comes to placements at SP Jain Global. It's a tri-city model, which means that the students will be studying in Singapore, Sydney, Dubai, and so on for the MBA program. Now, at each location in Singapore, in Sydney, in Dubai, there are our corporate relations teams. These corporate relations teams reach out to, you know, the potential recruiters and they get them to interview our students. Also, we have a full-fledged team in India. So they are based in Bombay. They also have— we also have teams in Delhi and Bangalore. So as far as a student is concerned, they have the opportunity of meeting with clients in Singapore, clients in Dubai, and clients in India. This is one aspect of the placements program. If you look at where our alumni is working right now, so the list of companies is very diverse. See, we have 4 streams. We have marketing, we We have finance, we have technology, and we have supply chain, and we have also consulting. So, the kind of companies that recruit come from across these various domains, okay. So, you have companies like your Amazon, your Flipkart, Google, Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst Young, McKinsey Implementation. So, there's a— so you have consulting, you have technology, you have supply chain, So it's across the spectrum that you get companies coming in recruiting. Careers today are getting increasingly global. What this means is even if you are working in India, right, you'll be dealing with global suppliers, maybe global clients, global teams, etc. So when our students, when they study in Singapore, Dubai, Australia, they work on projects with companies, they get, you know, they mingle with the culture, etc., etc. So that they are able to work seamlessly in multicultural and multinational organizations.

At SP Jain, we have a Future of Education think tank and tinker lab filled with technologists, designers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, people who are creating a vision of what business education should be in the future for this future of work and working today with advanced technologies and new pedagogies to create that, including Watson-enabled coaching and adaptive learning, psychoneurotesting in the admissions process and career counseling, micro-credentialing, mobile learning, and more. So one key message that I wanted to give is the following: You know, if you're not creating the future, you're going to get left behind.

Center Stage, in conversation with the SP Jain School of Global Management. Center Stage, in conversation with the SP Jain School of Global Management. Welcome back. I'm with Mr. Sandeep Jain of SP Jain Global, and we are talking about future of higher education. Mr. Jain, if I were to ask you, where are you seeing more traction, DBA or MBA?

In terms of student numbers, I think it's undergraduate or BBA. We are growing that 20% every year. Okay. But when you look at quality and reputation and rankings, it's clearly the MBA because we are far more selective, exclusive, and so we're not really looking to grow the numbers.

Okay. How many students have passed out from your institute and are all of them suitably placed?

Well, currently we have 7,000 alumni. As you know, we've started 14 years ago, and about half of them work outside India, and of course the second half work within India.

So what kind of initiative have you taken to attract the best talent in terms of business teachers and consultants to your institute?

Well, Students will join us for a high-quality education experience, and this can only be delivered by faculty. Yeah. We have recently invested in a new online delivery system, and we actually are going to put up a studio in the US so we can actually get American faculty who would not be willing to travel to Asia because they're very busy and our students can get a teaching experience from them. So, that's very exciting. So, we take a lot of trouble in getting the right faculty to enhance student learning experiences and therefore graduate outcomes.

Today when you look at disruptions all around, it's for real. The future you could see driverless car. Do you see a similar thing kind of happening in the education space?

Education as we currently know it is going to be totally disrupted. So today we have a model that sage on the stage, somebody teaches, you listen, you take notes, you sit for an exam. That model is history. That will completely change. And a new style of education that is blended, that you learn on your own, we call it personalized learning, others may call it self-directed learning. Okay. So, you now can learn on your own what you want to learn, when you want to learn. So, the whole new system of education and that I think is the future of education.

Can India become a hub for higher education? It's already number 3rd in the world.

India, India can most certainly become a hub for education because if you look at the deans of the top 6 Ivy League institutions in the US, they are Indians. Who were born and brought up in India.

Yeah.

And then have gone to the US. So, of course, India has a lot of talent, but where India lacks is the infrastructure. So, these talented faculty need the right sort of environment for them to work. If India can get that piece right, I am sure there would be a lot of international universities who would love to set up their campuses in India.

What kind of reforms or incentives are needed to boost this higher education sector in India?

Well, I think India needs to privatize education, in my view.

Okay, that's one.

That might mean higher costs for students, but these students are willing to pay these higher costs when they go outside India, so why not pay the same cost within India? And so, I think if India lets the private sector do what they know best, which is to create that relevant education, then I think India can certainly become a go-to country for education because we certainly have the cost structure in our favor.

Okay, very well put, Mr. Jain. Thanks a lot for being on the show and thanks for sharing your knowledge on the education side.

Totally my pleasure, Rajesh.

Pleasure.

Thank you.

Center Stage, in conversation with the S.B. Janss School of Global Management.