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DESPITE
the problems haunting the halls of the best management
school in Asia, the Asian Institute of Management (AIM)
posted higher placement rates for its graduates.
“I’m
faculty; I’m also management. The problem doesn’t affect
students. There’s no war but truce,” Rafael J. Azanza,
professor of AIM’s Master in Management Program, said.
Azanza
bared that placement offers— three months after
graduation—of products of the school’s Master in
Business Administration program soared to 126 percent,
which is up from 69 percent in 2006.
“That
means there’s a minimum of two to three offers each
graduate receives,” Azanza said, adding that most of
them get hired by August after graduating in May.
Likewise, the MM program has seen placement offers hit
90 percent, up from 60 percent in 2006 and single digits
in previous years.
“Graduates in this program are older, more experienced,
and hence, more expensive,” Azanza, who is also chairman
of the board of the Dr. Fe del Mundo Medical Center and
General Hospital, said.
The tiff
between the AIM Faculty Association Inc. leaders and AM
executives “has no effect on the placement or the way
things are going in the classroom,” Azanza stressed.
AIM has
50 faculty members teaching in the MBA and MM programs
for three major specializations: finance, marketing and
entrepreneurship.
Azanza
said that the AIM, one of a few schools carrying
accreditation from both AACSB (Association to Advance
Collegiate School of Business) and EQUIS (European
Quality Improvement System), continues to attract
students even from the West—the likes of Wharton,
Columbia and UCLA.
“Indeed,
as far as the West, because
Asia is the current darling of the world; they want to be as
close and personal to where the action is,” Azanza
explained.
Since
its introduction in 1968, the AIM has seen 3,600 MBA
degree holders walk out its doors as of May 2007. One of
them is Chemoil chief executive and founder Robert V.
Chandran (MBA ‘74) who two years ago said he will
invest $100,000 each year for five years as a venture
capital award for the best start-up venture by a
graduating MBA student of AIM.
The
school requires students of MBA to have two years’
full-time work experience and pay the $24,000 (P1.08
million) program fee.
MM
graduates have numbered 1,650. Students here are
required to have six years’ full time work experience
for the $14,000-worth program.
The
lowest salary that an AIM MBA graduate placed in a firm
based in the Philippines could go from a low of $20,000
a year to a high of $30,000. Azanza claims that they
have had a graduate who receives $120,000 a year, “but
this is in the United Kingdom, where the cost of living
is higher.”
An AIM
MM graduate in
Singapore
could also expect to receive a low $46,000 a year to
$84,000.
“I think
[it’s] because we have helped these students solidify
their Asian values and develop further their Western
skills,” Azanza explained. |
