Three Indian origin executives, PepsiCo's Ms Indra Nooyi, Motorola's Mr Sanjay Kumar Jha and Citigroup's Mr Vikram Pandit, are now among America's top paid chief executive officer, revealed a survey. Ms Nooyi has bagged the 67th slot with a total pay package of $13.97 million and Mr Jha got the 377th place with a total compensation of $3.45 million, as per a ranking compiled by The Wall Street Journal of 456 US companies. Another Indian Mr Pandit got the 450th position in the survey with a pay package of $125,000. The survey, which covered all 456 of the biggest US public companies with annual revenues of more than $4 billion that filed proxies between October1, 2009 and September 30, 2010.          Source :profit.ndtv.com

As campuses in Mumbai gear up for final placements, the mood among the students is quite upbeat. A significant increase in the number of pre-placement offers (PPOs) and pre-placement interviews (PPIs) across institutes signify a very healthy hiring season ahead. At the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), out of 114 students who have opted for final placements, the institute has already got PPOs and PPIs for 30 students. The offers have come from companies where the students recently completed their summer internships. The offers have come from different sectors and the biggest chunk is from BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), investment banking and consulting sectors (around 50%) and fast moving consumer goods or FMCG (33%). The other sectors include manufacturing (10%) and information technology (7%). At the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, the number of PPIs and PPOs has gone up compared to preceding years. Source : 05-11-10   DNA ...

 Graduating batches at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) have been taking rigorous seven-minute oral tests that have nothing to do with what they have studied in class. Their English language and comprehension skills are being evaluated. After staffing companies complained about poor language skills among students, the placement office at the institute has hired an agency to evaluate the English proficiency of the 1,300 students who will be up for placements this year. IIT-Madras and IIT-Kharagpur have also adopted similar tests for their students. “We took a poll among the students and most of them said they would have liked to undergo the evaluation at an earlier stage in their course,” said Mr Ravi Sinha, head of the placement office. While about 300 of them have excellent language skills, 500 have poor language skills, rest of the students fall somewhere in between. Source : 01-11-10   Hindustan Times  

To give a modern face lift to its distance education, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has entered into an agreement with Nokia to offer a Certificate English Course through Nokia phone. Prof. V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, IGNOU said, “We will initially start this programme in six districts of Maharashtra. After six months, depending on the response, we will launch it on a national level.” The course education would be in functional English to be provided through SMS. Prof. Pillai further added, “we have entered into an exclusive agreement with Nokia for this programme. This is a first-of-its-kind collaboration to provide English education on a large scale.” Mr. D. Shivakumar, MD, Nokia India, said “Nokia's Ovi Life Tools is aimed at bridging information gaps by providing timely and relevant information customized to the user's location, language and personal preferences directly on their mobile devices.” Source: September, 2010, New Kerala

NIIT Imperia in alliance with Google India has launched 'Advanced Online Advertising' program for advertising and marketing. This programme is a Google-certified programme, which has been specially designed by Google experts to provide an in-depth knowledge of Google's global advertising program Google “AdWords” to the Indian advertising and marketing professionals. The program will commence on October 5, 2010 for which the last date for the registration of the program is September 21, 2010. Mr. Shraman Jha, Head, NIIT Imperia said, “"This is a strategic tie-up with Google that will enable NIIT to offer a structured training program in online advertising and marketing for the first time in India. Through this cutting edge training program we hope to create a pool of professionals trained in effective use of the online medium to ensure that the marketing budget is spent more effectively and measurably.” Source:  Digital Learning      

T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), a Mangalore-based B-school, has started the India Blue Ocean Strategy Research Centre in association with Blue Ocean Strategy Regional Centre, Malaysia. The primary aim of setting up this institute is to provide adequate training to corporates, students and faculty members. Dr. Saji Gopinath, Director of TAPMI said, “We believe that this institute will help industry, the student community and faculty for better understanding of the market strategies in the wake of ever-changing market dynamics.” Mr. Peter Tan, Blue Ocean Strategy Institute, Malaysia, said, “The cornerstone of blue ocean strategy is ‘value innovation’ and a blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovation that creates value simultaneously for both the buyer and the company.” Source: September, 2010, Business Standard      

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) would start summer placements for the post graduate programme (PGP) batch 2010-12 from November 12, a release from the institute said. The B-school has decided to modify the basic process to include the cohort-based system, which is used in the final placement process for the PGP batch 2008-10 in March. The institute has decided to continue with the cohort-based process for placements due to its student-friendly nature that reduces stress and allows them more time for preparation. In this process, companies will be divided into groups called ‘cohorts’, based on multiple parameters such as roles, locations and salaries, and several cohorts will be held in one cluster. The cohorts would be scheduled based on the preference of the students. Interviews in the first cluster are scheduled to start from November 12 and will afterward proceed on weekends until all the students are placed in roles of their choice.  Source : Business St...

Reserve Bank of India is going in for a complete overhaul of its promotion and appraisal system, a first in the bank’s 75 years of experience. The bank is bringing in transparency in the performance appraisal system of its officers by allowing them to review their reports. In fact, it has also decided to put in place a mechanism to redress employee grievances. For this, it has set up a redressal mechanism to hear appeals from officers on communication of the entries made in their performance appraisal reports. Now, an unsatisfied officer can appeal against the marks awarded and also the remarks in the report made by his superiors within 15 days. source: The Financial Express  

ICFAI is going to provide engineering and law courses starting from this academic year. According to ICFAI Business School Director Mr. DS Rao, “The University has already sought permission from the University Grant Commission for the courses. Being a deemed university, it would design its own curriculum and also the admission process for these two courses.” The engineering courses are divided in five disciplines and in each streams, 60 students are admitted. Bar Council has allowed ICFAI to offer five year degree courses in law.

Last year, the Gujarat state government granted approval to many private universities in the state. Now, it is ensuring that all of them will follow the standard criteria and maintain their academic standards. In a meeting held at Gandhinagar, Vice-Chancellors of public universities and directors and director generals of private universities were called to meet Prof Sukhdev Thorat, chairman of university grants commission. It was found in the meeting that these universities were following many practices that were different from the UGC guidelines. One of the spokesperson said, “It was found by the state education department that after getting approval from the state government, many universities have not formed their governing bodies and were functioning on their own without a decision-making body.”