BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS TO THE HIRING OF REFUGEES
ONLINE MBA LAUNCH REFLECTS CHANGING STUDENT DEMANDS
SCHOOL: SP Jain Institute of Management and Research COUNTRY: India
SCHOOL: University of Sydney Business School COUNTRY: Australia
SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) has taken its flagship MBA equivalent onto the popular Coursera platform in a bid to meet the changing expectations of prospective students. The school’s online version of its Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) will blend asynchronous and synchronous classes over two years. It will also feature three on‑campus immersions of five days each in Mumbai. “At the heart of the online PGDM is the belief that education should adapt to the needs of learners and not the other way around. We enable participants to pursue higher education on their own terms, fitting their studies around their busy lives, thanks to the flexibility of online learning. Our course is designed to be accessible, convenient and above all, responsive to the needs of the participants,” said SPJIMR dean Varun Nagaraj. Coursera’s managing director for India and APAC Raghav Gupta emphasised the platform’s potential for widening access to the SPJIMR programme and others like it. “By partnering with leading Indian universities, we are opening doors to high-quality, flexible and affordable degrees to our global learners, helping them achieve their academic and career goals. We are thrilled to partner with SPJIMR to launch their flagship PGDM programme on Coursera,” Gupta said. The first year of the new PGDM programme will primarily cover core management courses such as economics, operations management and ethics in business. Participants can then undertake one of six industry-oriented micro- specialisations in the second year, including those relating to finance, supply chain management and information management/analytics. A mentorship programme will also be established in a bid to supply regular interactions with entrepreneurs and industry leaders. The advertised price at the time of writing is INR 10 lakhs or US $12,200. This is roughly half the price of SPJIMR’s full‑time, on-campus PGDM, which is currently listed at INR 20.42 lakhs for domestic students and is inclusive of basic accommodation. Applications are now open to join the new programme’s first cohort at the end of November, with interviews scheduled for July to October. TBD
According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are 103 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. These people deserve to work and be settled, but organisations tend to lack the right knowledge and processes to hire refugees. This is despite previous research showing that employers who had hired refugees in the past are keen to hire more refugees in the future – suggesting that refugees had brought value to those organisations. The University of Sydney Business School, in partnership with Crescent Foundation (a non-profit organisation that aims to work with companies to create sustainable employment pathways for refugees), has examined the reasons why businesses might struggle to recruit refugees in a new piece of research based in Australia. A total of 35 employers were interviewed, all of which expressed some interest in hiring refugee talent. However, only five of this number actually did so over a six-month period – a grand total of 14 per cent. A key problem identified was that businesses are at full capacity carrying out their usual day‑to‑day functions and simply don’t have the time to look into the possible grants and subsidies that might enable them to hire refugees. In addition, current funding focuses on rewarding service providers who manage to put refugees into employment. The researchers believe there should instead be a switch to recognising the work that goes into ensuring that a refugee is job-ready. They also believe there should be structures in place that train refugees to be job-ready through the creation of relationships between social enterprises and settlement agencies. “Each year, Australia welcomes thousands of refugees, most of whom find it difficult to obtain work befitting their experience and expertise. They want to work and employers say they are willing to hire them, but our research found a substantial gap between employer intentions and actions. “There is an opportunity for employers to play a vital role in improving employment outcomes of people from a refugee background, while expanding their talent pool, and an opportunity for government to remove some of the more significant barriers,” said lead author Betina Szkudlarek. EB
12 | Ambition | JUNE 2023
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