Although shopping malls offering a plethora of goods and services under one roof is a familiar and well-established concept in post-liberalisation 21st century urban India, a well-administered education mall offering a variety of high quality degree and certification programmes under one roof is a new proposition. That’s the objective of education entrepreneur Robert Donison, promoter-managing director of the Bangalore Management Academy (BMA, estb.2004), which he prefers to liken to a “knowledge village” offering a constantly expanding menu of learning programmes to the public. “We provide the skills-based qualifications of well-established universities and institutions of higher education in BMA. Currently, we offer the business management degree programme of the Bharatidasan Institute of Management (BIM) — the B-school of Bharatidasan University; the MBA (international), Master of professional accounting and Master of hospitality management of the Edith Cowan University, Australia; the LLM degree of the University of Aberdeen, UK and a foundation course to qualify students for entry into any of the 11 universities of the Northern Consortium of Universities, UK which includes Manchester, Leeds, Yorkshire and other well-reputed British universities. We also offer the 18-month diploma programme of the Retailers Association of India,” says Donison. An engineering graduate of PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore who pressed onto acquire a Masters in computer sciences from the London campus of South Eastern University, UK, Donison began his career as director of international admissions at the Emile Woolf College, London. In 1999 he co-promoted the London School of Commerce which quickly expanded into “one of the largest private sector B-schools in the UK with 3,000 students from 40 countries”, offering bachelor and Masters degrees in business management and administration. However in 2004, he felt the call of the home country and returned to India to promote the Bangalore Management Academy in the “happening garden city”. Having invested over Rs.30 crore in his novel BMA project, Donison has drawn up ambitious plans to establish the academy as the country’s first private sector knowledge village, spread over three acres at Marthahalli in suburban Bangalore. “Our objective is to establish BMA as a respected provider of multinational degrees and qualifications recognised and accepted worldwide, by working in close collaboration with reputed universities and institutions of higher learning around the world. By 2009 we will offer ten degree-based career pathways, and expect an aggregate enrollment of 2,000 students in BMA — all of whom will become highly skilled graduates of top universities with the option to either proceed abroad for higher studies or to be absorbed by Indian industry. A huge skills shortage is imminent in India Inc. We are preparing our students to contribute towards filling the breach,” says Donison. Right on! Dilip Thakore (Bangalore) Acharya phenomenon Fifteen years ago in 1992, Prof. R. Kalyanakrishnan and some of his students in the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M), department of computer science and engineering, initiated a research and development project with profound implications for the country’s lackadaisical adult literacy programme. The objective: to develop multi-lingual software to enable the country’s huge non-English speaking population…
