National University of Juridical Sciences Kolkata Launches Global Online Course; Attracts Students From Middle East and Africa

KOLKATA, India, July 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Kolkata-based National University of Juridical Sciences launched an online course, Masters in Buisness Laws , in line with courses offered by top foreign universities like University of Melbourne, University of Edinburgh, Queen Mary University, Kings College London, University of Southern California etc. to cater to lawyers and businessmen in need of strategic legal education with specializations like M&A, investment banking, institutional finance, cyber laws, intellectual property laws, corporate governance etc. (Course details can be found on the course website: http://mbl.nujs.edu./). Apart from a large number of executive learners from India, many from other Asian and African countries have started learning business law online from the Kolkata-based University.

Widely recognized as one of the top 3 National Law Universities in India, NUJS has been a brainchild of Professor Madhava Menon, who before starting NUJS as the first Vice Chancellor, had started National Law School of India University in Bangalore. The provisions of the WBNUJS Act, 1997 envisages that the University will take part in creating legal awareness in the country and engage in creating multidisciplinary courses.

NUJS has been a pioneer in launching the first online legal courses in India since 2012. After launching a series of very successful executive education courses, it ventured to offer the first masters course around business laws, and hit success with the first batch itself. The first batch comprises of 110 learners from India and abroad, including CEOs, top executives from MNCs, lawyers with decade plus experience, and a large number of lawyers and executives who find it easier to balance an online course with their professional and personal life compared to a full-time contact course that requires them to travel.

The Uiversity also assembled a top notch industry-academia panel, convened by the Vice Chancellor Ishwara Bhatt, with representations from lawyers, academicians from top universities around the world, successful businessmen and investors. Some of them, like Murali Neelakantan, an ex-global general counsel of Cipla, or Siboney Sagar, ex-general counsel of General Electric and British Telecom, have worked in India as well as internationally, heading practice areas in global law firms and legal teams at MNCs, and bring unique global perspective to the course. Ex-bureaucrats like former IRS officer Sunil Agarwal, who now is a partner at AZB & Partners, have also contributed in building the course. 

Niloy Biswas, Country Manager (Information Risk), Hewlett Packard, was one of the first few people to enrol in the course. According to Niloy, "I wanted to have a 360 degree view of how different business laws correlate to security front, to make our organisation's interaction with the clients tighter, to not have ambiguity in contracts. This course would take me far into this direction."

Similarly, Anoop Krishna has 33 years of experience in corporate and investment banking. He is now the Chief General Manager (Corporate Division, North and West Region) at State Bank of India. An extremely busy professional, he could not have joined a full-time course to learn law or regulatory strategy, even if there was one that suited his requirements. As the course can be studied on the go from a mobile app, it enabled him to venture into taking it up despite a very busy schedule.

Gautam Sarkar, an NRI project manager now working in Qatar, also took up the course to expand his repertoire of skills. "I want to take bigger advisory and strategic roles for legal and regulatory work. Both, me and my friend, decided to take this course to get full exposure to Indian laws and regulations. I got opportunities in India but wasn't confident on taking them up, but now this course will help me," said Gautam.

Online courses are a big hit with working women, as it gives them access to world-class education without having to compromise on work or family. Shatarupa Chaki, Human Resources Director at Stryker India and a mother, is very upbeat about the course, and said, "It will enable me to serve better as a strategic board member of the company."

As higher education rapidly moves online, massive companies like EdX and Coursera have taken the online learning market by storm by bringing courses from top universities online and millions of Indians have been enrolling into these foreign courses. NUJS tied up with an Indian e-learning course enabler iPleaders to launch these courses. iPleaders provides technology, customer support, online sales and marketing outreach, academic services and even conduct market research to identify unsatisfied demand in the education sector. The course is available on LawSikho.com.

Indian universities have the potential to make unique courses relevant to the Indian educational needs and even cater to the global online learning market, but successful or popular online courses are yet to come from them. Success of online courses by NUJS Kolkata and their global appeal is definitely a positive sign from this perspective.

About National University of Juridical Sciences: 

The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS or NUJS) is an autonomous law university offering courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It is in Salt Lake City of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. NUJS is considered as one of the top three law schools in India as well as one of the best in the world. Established in the year 1999 by the legal education visionary Dr. Madhava Menon, its supremacy in legal research, academics and training is acclaimed and well recognized in Indian legal as well as corporate circles.

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