Source: Education Times
Aditya Wadhawan | Posted on Monday, September 20,2021 14:00
Integrated Programme in Management (IPM) is designed in such a way that it becomes a continuous hybrid of a Bachelor as well as of a Master’s degree.
Speaking to Education Times, Arindam Banerjee, deputy director, GMBA & MGB, SP Jain School of Global Management in Mumbai, says, “Integrated Management Programme (IMP) would provide students with an opportunity to explore the depth of business subjects over a longer period of duration as a back-to-back learning process. IMP saves time, cuts cost and energy as compared to doing management programmes at UG and PG levels separately. It helps develop a comprehensive understanding of the basics of Management in an uninterrupted way, which puts students in a better position for choosing their specialisation. Participants in any IMP are better off in terms of the syllabus as they study which essentially avoids repetition of subjects. Electives and specialisations subjects in IMP such as Marketing, Finance, Operations, International Business, Human Resource Management, Strategy, Information Technology, Consulting, Public Relations, Communication, Financial Economics, Accounting, Corporate Law, statistical methods and quantitative methods which are taught provide the significant scope of employability opportunities available across industries.”
After pursuing IMP, students can look forward to well-paying jobs in both public and private sectors including multinational companies in Pharmaceuticals, Retail, Banking, Manufacturing, Information, Insurance, Hospitality, Technology, Education, E-commerce and Infrastructure etc, he adds.
Shivendra Mathur, registrar and adjunct associate professor (Management), NIIT University, says, “An integrated programme is a study programme comprising of a curriculum that is jointly designed by two or more programmes. This is regulated by a specific set of guidelines. The biggest advantage is that it saves a year. Two standalone courses in the form of BBA and MBA can be time-consuming. The other advantage of an integrated programme is that a student gets an opportunity to enrol in a post-graduate programme immediately after class XII. In an integrated programme, the approach is to teach foundation courses followed by primer courses, which finally leads to the specialisation courses. By this approach, the courses from the first semester itself are aligned to specialisation in a streamlined way. Students who aspire for a career in marketing, highly specific domains of social media marketing and digital marketing are well advantaged to take up an integrated management course.”
A carefully designed integrated curriculum gives the benefit of two programmes in a shorter period and more rigour. The architecture of the integrated programme is designed to equip the students with the new age skills and tools such as FinTech, Analytics, Automation, Social Media Marketing and Blockchain etc, adds Mathur.
Vinita Sahay, director, IIM Bodh Gaya, says, “IPM is a first step towards implementing NEP 2020, which talks about the fact that in times to come every campus cannot be a standalone single programme kind of a setup.”
Campuses have to diversify into different setups. “We initiated teaching an integrated Management course starting at the undergraduate level. Students would now be given an exit option after three years as NEP 2020 also advocates that students should be given exit options. This would allow the students to pursue MBA from anywhere in the world. The IPM degree would be a very useful degree with a wide ambit. We have chosen a semester system where a student studies the same credits but in a little more paced environment. Finance, Marketing, Design Thinking, Entrepreneurship and other conventional subjects will be taught. We aim to create socially responsible leaders for corporate India.”
