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Physical expansion by higher education institutions is becoming obsolete as technology evolves, according to the leader of a business school with campuses across Asia and the West.??

Nitish Jain, president of SP Jain School of Global Management, said the organisation was no longer looking at opening new campuses, two years after it opened an outpost in London.?

¡°Our focus from the global model has shifted to the tech model,¡± Jain told?̽»¨ÊÓƵ. ¡°I don¡¯t think there is a need for us to expand the number of cities we go to, but to upgrade the quality of the learning that students get. And that can only happen with technology.¡±

The business school, which is named after Shriyans Prasad Jain, Nitish Jain¡¯s grandfather and an Indian parliamentarian in post shortly after the country gained independence, opened its first campus in Dubai in 2004.?

¡°Dubai was growing very rapidly, but it had no high-quality educational institutions, so we spotted an opportunity,¡± he said. ¡°If we had come to London, for example, way back then, we wouldn¡¯t have been given a chance.¡±?

The organisation went on to establish campuses in Singapore, Sydney and Mumbai. ¡°For the first 18,19 years, we were happily living in the [APAC] region,¡± Jain said. ¡°We consolidated our operations and then thought, now we¡¯re ready for the Western capitals.¡±

Jain said the company initially considered buying an existing university in London but found ¡°only the bad universities were for sale [and] that would spoil our name¡±.

Instead, in 2023, the organisation opened a new institution in London¡¯s South Quay area, which offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes with a business focus.?

SP Jain London School of Management was one of the first to be granted provisional degree awarding powers by the Office for Students (OfS) from launch, meaning it did not have to partner with an existing university to get started.?

¡°That was very¡­prestigious and helped us to come to the UK in a meaningful way,¡± said Jain. ¡°I thought we got great support from the government.?

¡°Many times, people feel the UK is very bureaucratic. I didn¡¯t have that impression at all. I thought it was very supportive.¡±

Today, the institution¡¯s undergraduate courses mostly consist of British students, while its postgraduate courses attract international students, primarily from India.?

Policy uncertainty in the UK, including?threats to axe the graduate visa, have been a concern, Jain said, but ¡°it¡¯s challenging all over the world¡±.

While Jain put much of the institution¡¯s success to date down to its multi-campus model, with students encouraged to study in different cities over the course of their degrees, the future, he believed, will depend on its ability to evolve with technology.

¡°I think 50 per cent of business schools or universities will shut down in three to four years from now,¡± he said. ¡°Because they¡¯ve not kept up.¡±

In October 2024, the institution rolled out AI Tutor ¨C an app all students have on their phones, with an AI-based avatar that acts as a personal tutor.?

¡°The AI tutor is something that they need to use every day before coming to class,¡± Jain said. ¡°It¡¯s done pre-class and so what can be studied at home should be studied at home is our philosophy.?

¡°When they come to class, it¡¯s all about the applications,¡± he said. ¡°When they look for jobs, companies are looking for the application¡­and our students are far better prepared, compared to other universities and compared to our own students a year ago.¡±

AI is being used in a variety of other ways across the institution as it attempts to adapt.?

¡°We record all the lectures, we put it into an AI system, and the AI will give detailed feedback to every professor,¡± Jain said. ¡°We use it to set exam papers or to vet exam papers, so to ensure all the course learning outcomes have been included in the exams.¡±

Students are also permitted to use AI in assessments but they must share the prompts they have used so professors can judge their critical thinking abilities.

¡°I am actually very surprised that schools, not just in the UK but all over the world, are very slow to adapt ¨C too slow,¡± he said.?

¡°At some point, even we may not exist, but I often tell all our staff: ¡®Let¡¯s at least be the last man standing¡¯. So if everyone¡¯s going to die, let¡¯s be the last one to die.¡±

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com