MBA v/s PGDM: What is best suited for you?

If you have just finished graduation and are looking for an admission in a professional management program, you may just feel a bit confused as some may have recommended you to enroll for Master in Business Administration (MBA) where as others may influence you to go for Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM). If you are wondering that not long back, more students used to prefer MBA but now there is remarkable shift towards PGDM, this may make you ask yourself as to “why PGDM”? Well though outcomes of both the programs are pretty much similar, however there are certain differences.

PGDM is offered by autonomous institutions as they do not offer MBA since they are not affiliated to any University. Comparatively, it has got a distinctive advantage as compared to MBA, more so in case one is planning for a career in corporate sector.

The main advantage of PGDM program as compared to MBA is that the curriculum in case of PGDM is dynamic and more flexible as compared to that of MBA. It generally gets updated frequently whereas curriculum for MBA does not get updated that often as any change in course curriculum has to be approved at University level that generally takes a lot of time. On an average, MBA course curriculum by Indian Universities gets updated after a gap of 4-5 years and in certain cases even more than that.

In addition to this, curriculum for MBA is more of examination oriented that generally covers theoretical aspects, whereas that for PGDM is more industry oriented that focuses more on job related skills. PGDM emphasizes on improving skills set of the students in terms of improving their practical skills that shall help them to perform better in corporate sector.

However, one needs to be sure about the quality of education in a particular PGDM college before finalizing on one for the purpose of admission. As is the case of various leading PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR like Asian Business School, Noida, they follow “Blended Learning Methodology” that emphasizes on subjecting students to industry and global exposure as against following the traditional class room approach. This approach adopted by top management institutes emphasizes on multi-disciplinary programs and projects, Case Studies, Role Plays, Simulations, Guest Lectures, Games, Group Discussions, Quizzes, as well as other value added top ups including Summer Internships, Live Projects, Industry Visits, Conferences and Workshops that adds to practical skills of the students.

These differences between PGDM and MBA programs as mentioned above have resulted in better PGDM admissions over the past decade or so, as the modern corporate want the new interns to be ready for the job from day one, quite in contrast to pre liberalization days when companies used to invest lot of money for training the new recruits and even provide them lot of time to start functioning independently.