Stand aside IBA and LUMS, make way for KSBL!

The Karachi School for Business and Leadership (KSBL) will shortly stand alongside the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) and the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) to cater to the need of the business sector, KSBL Dean and Chief Executive Officer and Karachi Education Initiative (KEI) Director F Robert Wheeler III told Pakistan Today in an interview. The KSBL would start its academic activities from September 2012. “The KEI has decided to open KSBL campuses in all major cities of the country but its first campus would be opened in Karachi that is under construction and expected to be complete shortly.”
He said the KEI has organised workshops in all major cities to introduce KSBL and invited graduates to study. “The KSBL was started under the KEI, which is a group of corporate leaders and businessmen who felt the need for a quality business school in Karachi. The KSBL entered in a strategic collaborative agreement with the University of Cambridge Judge Business School in 2009 and it is first of its kind by the University of Cambridge, and hence, would play a significant role in improving the quality of higher education in Pakistan, a country of great importance.”
“According to the terms of the agreement, the faculty and administration of Cambridge Judge Business School would play a huge part in setting up the curriculum and coursework for the MBA program and the executive education program. The Cambridge Judge Business School will also send its faculty to teach the executive education programs which would be taught at the KSBL.”
He said the Cambridge Judge Business School has designed the curriculum keeping in mind the need of South Asia to make it applicable as well. Local business experts have also played key role in planning the curriculum and after introducing modifications and changes in the Cambridge Judge Business School-recommended curriculum, it was finally designed.
Wheeler said that candidates having 16 years of education would be eligible for admission to the KSBL. It would be a two-year programme for graduates and the focus would be to impart them with best business practices and ethics of business and management.
“Pakistan is a wonderful place to work and there is great potential, which needs to be explored. I have visited many cities of the country but I like the hustle and bustle in Karachi that I have not observed in any other city of the country.”
He said although there is uncertainty in the city and many people are killed in a day, the government machinery has intervened and put things on the right track.
“I think political killings in the city had turned the situation volatile, but now everything is fine and there are no problems for the foreign faculty to teach in the city.”