|
Dr. Ritika Gauba Assistant Professor Marketing Asia-Pacific Institute of Management New Delhi |
Dr. Shefali Srivastava Assistant Professor Asia Pacific Institute of Management, New Delhi shefali.srivastava009@gmail.com |
The
most crucial role of a B- School is to prepare management graduate to become
leaders and managers, and hence the courses should be designed to impart managerial
conceptual, technical and human skills. However, to handle the multifaceted
managerial responsibilities students should also acquire the competence to
apply these skills. This is an indispensable need, as the growth and success of
an organization may get affected if there is a dearth of managers with the
necessary skills. A study based on a survey of senior executives, confirmed
that unsuccessful or successful managerial performance is proportionately related
to the presence and absence of these three skills among the managers.
With
every passing year, & steadily, the Management institutes have started
resembling the corporate in terms of their work culture. However, when it comes
to parting professional education relevant to the business houses, they are
losing their relevance. Studies
reveal that the corporate world is anxious about the low level of human and
soft skills among the business graduates.
Many reports have even corroborated managerial failures to the deficiency
in human skills.
The
picture, based on the existing literature appears to be obscure. On one hand,
the growth in terms of number of institutes has been remarkable (AICTE
Handbook, 2018-2019) but on the other, study of the placement seasons has
exposed the declining skills of the management students.
The
paper investigates the various reasons behind the paradox of qualified yet
unemployable graduate’s. It furthers
suggests rigorous steps which have to be taken both by the apex authority AICTE
and the management of the institutes together to resolve the above incongruity.
1. Introduction
The
economic policies of post 1991 had opened the gates for the business in terms
of Liberalization, Privatization & Globalization i.e laizzez faire, in global arena throwing many challenges of
sustenance to Indian industries. This had further altered the
the fundamental structure of the Indian Economy by removing the
protectionists policy which eventually further led to removal of Quota system
of General Agreement of Trade and Tariff and so on. The Economic Reforms initiated by India, as
they are commonly known, fuelled the growth across all sectors of business and industries. The bye-product
of this growth was the augmented demand for people with managerial and
leadership skills to administer the expanding base of the economy. This paved way for surge in manpower to manage the boost in demand for
quality business managers to be supported by the efforts of Management Education in India which is being
regulated to ensure quality in the first 2 decade of post economic reforms.
Now, it is observed, that there has been considerable set-back with a number of
B-School facing challenges of survival due to certain obvious reasons. This
papers analyses the reasons and how can we sustain the value of B-School
education, given the present trend and diagnosis.
Before
1947, only the elite class had access to higher education and thus there were
less than a million students enrolled in 500 odd colleges and 20 odd Universities that there the Institutions
of Higher Education. Of these only 50 odd were of management colleges. Post reforms,
within a decade, the number rose to
seven hundred management colleges throwing many a challenge. By 2013, by the end of next decade, this number had galloped to 4000 Business Schools.
(Jayaraman & Arora 2014). Thanks to the approach and the then approval policy of All India Technical Education
(AICTE) towards regulation, the Business Schools mushroomed in every nook and
corner of the country. The steep increase in the number of colleges and the
intake in contrast sharply with the quality of education provided
in these institutes due to certain obvious reasons including that quality of
faculty, curriculum designing skills, industry linkages etc.
As
per the AICTE Handbook of 2018-19, the total intake in management institutes is
3,93,055. Though the gigantic number of capacity built over a period in
management education indicate the expansion and reach as a success indicator, yet
there are significant questions about the relevance and quality of the budding
business managers they generate (Pffefer and Fong, 2002) and when they reach
out to business, they get eventually discarded for want of skill set deficiency
syndrome and go redundant due to glut in capacity on the other hand.
1.1.Purpose
The
purpose of this petite paper is to dissect the current scenario of management education
in India. This study further focuses in discussing the present day’s global
challenges in terms of relevance and to
set the tone of future of business education in India in the light of various
issues and concerns surrounding it. This paper is also an attempt to suggest a few imperatives
to be considered to sustain the quality in Business education arena. This paper
do draws from many source including existing data, research reports and
newspaper articles obtainable to
substantiate and support the research.
1.2 Literature Review
Montmore
& Stone (1990) were of the opinion that industry view about the purpose of
management education is to turn out graduates who can render value addition in
a team, communicate effectively and solve problems efficiently rather than pose
problems. Whereas, students perceive that management education, as means to enhance their earnings and elevation which could strengthen their career prospects. Some other
purpose of education as proposed by Wicks (1992) are – acquisition of knowledge
& imparting a value system in the students.
The
most crucial role of a B- School is to prepare management graduate to become managers
who can play lead roles, and hence says Katz (1974), the courses should be designed to impart
managerial skills right from conceptual to application oriented technical and human skills. However, to handle
the multifaceted managerial responsibilities, the students should also acquire the competence to
apply these skills. This is, stated in Peterson & Van Fleet, 2004, as quintessential since the growth and success of an organization may
get affected if there is a dearth of managers with the requisite skills. An analysis based on a survey of senior executives,
confirmed that successful managerial
performance or otherwise is proportionately related to the presence and absence
of these major skills among the managers. (Peterson and Peterson (2004))
With
every passing year, state Porter and McKibbin (1988), slowly & steadily,
the Management institutes have started resembling the corporate in terms of
their work culture. However, when it comes to imparting professional education
relevant to the business houses, they are losing their relevance. Many studies
manifested the present day’s trend of Business Education that the corporate world is anxious about the kind
of human and soft skills among the
business graduates which led eventually to non-acceptance of quite a few of
them as they are not fully equipped nor prepared. Many reports have even
corroborated managerial failures to the deficiency in human skills. (Mc Connell,
2004).
The
emerging trend is visible from the existing literature and the B-Schools appear
to be obscure and unwilling to pay heed to restructure and revamp themselves.
On one hand, the growth in terms of number of institutes has been remarkable
(AICTE Handbook, 2018-2019) but on the other, study of placement has exposed the declining skills of the management
students. The state of affairs needs to be examined to provide significant
insights with probable resolutions to the policy makers and regulators.
2. Issues in sustaining Quality of
Management Education in India
The
quality of MBA education has recently been the centre of attention in many
research and discussions. Some of the major issues highlighted in these debates
are;
a. Lack
of qualified and trained faculty,
b. Lack
of content in curriculum and capability to design the delivery,’
c. Inadequacies
in conventional Universities in imparting B-Education,
d. Multiplicity
of enforcement and monitoring agencies
leading to chaos,
e. Lack
of Industry & Academia interface
f. The
theoretical inclination of the management courses
g. The
neglect of imparting people in terms of giving a managerial perspectives, communication & soft skills to the
graduates.
h. The
multiple entry tests to land in a B-School diluting the standards required for
entry into the portals etc,
The
All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has, inter allia, assumed the role of suggesting and designing the framework and model curriculum
which is redundant especially when the
body is to regulate the system as the nodal body for regulating the entry and expansion of Business Education
System being part of Technical Education stream. Quite a few problems that undermine the
regulatory powers and its effectiveness during the last one decade. It is
reported that many business Schools got AICTE recognition based on attractive
institutional plans and entries through the portals which actually may not be
in existence nor implemented. The study further revealed that there are in
reality a few management colleges in India who operate with many inadequancies.
There
was a time when AICTE had given easy approvals to private institutes as it
assumed that more college would mean more educated students in the country.
However, these private Institutions are
charging hefty amounts of fees from the students while imparting poor quality
education. Management education as Seth, 1991 point outs actually generates
elitism among its students. Due to the
poor quality education imparted to them they are unable to attain their dream
job, however due to elitism they refuse to do any low paying job, thus getting
frustrated.
It
is reported that more than fifty percent of the faculty teaching in top 100
B-School are not PhD’s. Almost 70 percent of the management colleges in India
do not full fill the minimum requirement of seven full time faculty.(Cosmode
Research Center, 2003). Although some
B-schools compromise on the quality or quantity of faculty due to their
unavailability in the market. As Kumar 2006 states Presently, the biggest
challenge faced by technical educational institutions in India is the acute
shortage of qualified and competent faculties. However, there are also a number
of the management colleges who do so in purpose to keep their costs low.
(Sarkar, 2007). Not realizing the impact
this has on the quality of education imparted and the resultant poor quality
manager it produces. The less than required number of faculty also means that
the faculty are over burdened with work having little a no time for either
research or training.
Abroad
the industry and educational institutes work in association with each other.
The professors learn from the real life experiences of mangers and create case
studies which are taught in classes. However, in India the two have no relation
with each other (baring a few top B -schools) and meet only at the time of
recruitments.
Management
education in India though has gained increased prominence with a remarkable
rise in number of management institutions, yet the above problems pose a
serious threat to its survival. It is thus essential to take a long-term
perspective for handling the problem areas keeping in mind the future of all
the stakeholders.
3. Strategies for meeting the
Challenges
The
enormous expansion and growth of B- Schools in India through private initiatives
has largely been chaotic and unplanned resulting in reflecting skill gap of not
meeting the standards required by Industry. This in turn has eroded its credibility and undermined
the value of the degree in the corporate world. The Coprorates have set their
own standards and parameters to visit the Institutions for absorbing them
leading to underemployment and unemployment.
Although
quality of education imparted in the B- School is receiving the attention of
policy makers, the cost escalation (fees) is yet another serious
threat making the management education unaffordable for the deserving, but economically backward students which means
it is indirectly a market for affluent society. The industry on the other hand continuously
harps on the skill shortage despite high graduate unemployment.
With
the view to resolve the paradox of qualified yet unemployable graduate’s, rigorous steps have to be taken both by the Nodal
Ministry, regulatory body i.e AICTE,
Corporates and the B-Schools. All these
stakeholders should join together have to ensure the following-
3.1 One
point entry test similar to NEET is required in Business Education, which could
be entrusted with either a Collective Body or Board comprising of Industry and Academia experts from B-Schools
which would set the tone and tenor in
imparting Business Education. This would lead to reasonable acceptance by
the Industry to set the standards with an independent outlook which could be
supported by the Network of B.Schools in terms of monitoring the standards
through a Policy initiative of the Nodal Ministry.
3.2 A
vibrant and experiential curriculum and
content is to be developed and made dynamic through periodical update by a Central Board in which all
the stake holders i.e Academi, Industry leaders and professionals, regulatory
body and nodal Ministry are made part of
it so that the model curriculum are designed and shared through a common
platform. The Nodal Ministry is expected
to take this initative to bring all the
stakeholders to the table to collalte
all these inputs for common benefits. However, the modalities of
imparting education could be left free to their wisdom by the Faculty of
the concerned B-School as it certainly
makes value in terms of divergence in dispensation.
3.3 The
IIMs are apparently sitting with a huge piles of funds and are supposed to play
a lead role in revamping the management education stream. The Nodal Ministry
could identify and formulate a policy to extricate a reasonable amount of
surplus for creating a Foundation for the Cause of Business Education akin to
CSR norms. This could be eventually
extendable to other surplus making B-Schools.
3.4 A
common knowledge sharing pool for B-School could be evolved through the
initiative of the Nodal Ministry to associate them in many ways for the cause
of Business Education system of the country.
3.5 The
Industry should join hands together with the Institutional system to ensure that there is a greater
collaboration between industry & B- Schools. The faculty should be given a
chance to learn from the real life cases of corporate and incorporate the same
through case studies and simulation in the classrooms. Live projects of
students in the corporate (besides Summer Internships) should be made a regular
part of the curriculum.
3.6 B-Schools
and Corporate exchange should be made a
norm. Faculty should go and spend time in the corporate to learn from
experience and observation. Whereas, the experts from the industry should come
to teach a part of the syllabus.
3.7 Faculty
development through training and research is also a must which needs to be
strengthened to improve the overall
quality of management education.
India
is ideally with an opportune moment in her history, with a demographic dividend
of 65% of her human resource pool under the age of 35 with about 12 million
individuals expected to join the workforce every year (India Skill Report
2018). With the given demographic dividend, the responsibility of equipping the
youth with employable education is the need of the hour to harness it.
Qualified and skilled human resources are most important propellant for
economic advancement of our nation. Achieving the above is a difficult task,
but not an impossible one. A strong and
vigilant controlling authority (AICTE) and a committed college management what
is required to gift this nation skilled employable graduates the nation so
desperately requires.
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