India Goes Global

It is no secret that Indians have been doing well in the U.S. universities for many years now. But it is now becoming very obvious that U.S. universities want to engage with India in a big way- if the Foreign Universities Bill finds its way, maybe through setting up a few campuses here as well.

I am at a conference organised by a newly formed Academy of Indian Marketing at Delhi. Some global biggies of Indian academia abroad are here, including Jagadish Sheth of the famous Howard Sheth model in Consumer Behaviour, and many things including research on CRM since. Also here is Rajan Varadarajan, an immensely prolific academic researcher and journal editor, and many others.

But what is remarkable is that the Academy of Marketing, USA is also here and intends supporting this association in some of its initiatives. So is the Marketing Science institute of the U.S. These are the big names in the business of academia, and it signals that India is arriving in some ways. There will be increasing opportunities for Indian academicians in India to do their bit, publish their work with original research done here, write cases and so on.

A depressing statistic though is that the number of Indians applying to the U.S. for Ph.D in management or marketing has dropped over the years. Korea and China have taken the lead by a large margin. Anyone listening? We need a lot of good Ph.D.s.