BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
FROM THE CEO
T ravel broadens the mind as they say, and in fact my recent trip to India was very enlightening. Our AMBA & BGA roadshow involved travelling to a number of major cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai, in order to present the association’s membership and accreditation offerings to schools. We also held a series of workshops, designed to help schools share guidance on best practice and how to build diversified programmes and income streams. India already boasts nine BGA member schools and the demand for business education in the country continues to expand apace. Unlike many European or Asian countries, India has a rapidly growing young population, with 50 per cent of its citizens under the age of 25, equivalent to some 700 million people. The most ambitious local schools are keen to differentiate themselves by enhancing their teaching and learning quality standards, since there are few barriers to anybody setting up a business school there. A staggering 4,000 of the estimated 16,000 business schools worldwide are located in India. One of the main benchmarks for success in becoming a desirable business school is to attract applications from the very best students on entry. To achieve this, affiliation with an international accreditation body such as BGA is a useful tool. In contrast to AMBA, BGA offers business schools three tiers of association through membership, validation and accreditation, where schools undergo a consultative improvement journey. Another contrast to AMBA is BGA’s focus on impact in its accreditation process, which allows schools to differentiate and excel in areas they are good at without the threat of losing their accreditation. Schools must demonstrate their positive impact on their key stakeholders through the creation of objective-based impact metrics, using BGA’s Continuous Impact Model. The accreditation process supports business schools in defining their key strategic objectives and their level of proficiency across a range of dimensions, making the accreditation highly consultative in nature. The accreditation process includes a two-day assessment visit conducted by an experienced peer-review team. In addition to our well-established portfolio of 15 AMBA-accredited business schools in India, we are experiencing a strong surge in demand from schools keen to join the Business Graduates Association as members and subsequently achieve BGA accreditation. This reflects an increasing desire among Indian schools to enhance teaching and learning standards, as well as to become more international through joint programmes, faculty exchanges and student placements – and we are equally keen to welcome them into our global network. In fact, during our travels, we were delighted to discover the incredible interest in BGA, which is likely to result in a significant increase in membership across the subcontinent.
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India’s ambitions for accreditation AMBA & BGA CEO Andrew Main Wilson reflects on his recent trip through India and outlines how BGA aligns with the ambitions of many of the country’s business schools
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