XLRI to Open Singapore Campus

One of India's top post-graduate schools, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, is setting up a campus in Singapore in June.

The institute said it wanted to ride on Singapore's rising popularity as an education destination for students in the region.

It will begin with an initial batch of 60 students at its Bukit Merah campus, but expects enrolment to hit one thousand within 5 years.

The school is joining a growing list of foreign institutions with campuses in Singapore.

Father N Casimir Raj, Director, XLRI, said: "Singapore itself is a small market for us. But when I met the EDB, I was really convinced that they are very serious to make Singapore as an education hub for Asian Pacific countries. Secondly they were also willing to help us to go ahead in that process."

The Singapore campus will be XLRI's second campus outside India after Dubai.

For a start, it will offer Masters programmes for both full and part-time students.

It also plans to offer specialised management courses for working executives.

XLRI says that's because it will take time before the student population here hits critical mass.

Until then, its strategy is to stay as a niche player focusing on human resources programmes.

Father N Casimir Raj said: "Human resources management is changing, the face of it is changing. For example, the timing of the work. People have to work on 3 shifts as in the production line. As a result, there is a lot of stress created, quality of life suffers, family life suffers. So how do we cope with that?"

Singapore has four main universities and there are also many private institutions that offer tertiary education.