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Manipal , Nov. 23

MUSHROOMING management schools, over dependence on Western models in teaching with no relevance to Indian conditions and inexperienced faculty at most B-schools came in for discussion at a workshop on "Management education: Quality and competitiveness", organised by the Manipal Institute of Management as part of "Bremen meets Manipal" programme of Bremen University of Applied Science in Manipal recently.

Presenting a paper on "Management Education: Problems and Challenges", Dr Francis Cherunilam of the School of Management Studies of Cochin University of Science and Technology, said the number of private unaided B-schools recognised by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) went up from 30 in 1990 to 500 in 2000. Though the proliferation of management institutes has been haphazard and unhealthy to a certain extent, it has several healthy dimension and facets also.

On the dearth of management faculty, he said many teachers of the newly-established B-schools are MBAs from sub-standard institutes and did not have proper management education.

Limited exposure of students to real industrial situations is a general weakness of management education, he said.

Dr Cherunilam suggested that AICTE and the University Grants Commission should lay down better standards regarding faculty and infrastructure for B-schools. Affiliated B-schools desirous of achieving high stature and status should be autonomous and dynamic, he added.

Prof N. Divakar Rao, Head of the Department of Management Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru National College of Engineering, Shimoga, in his paper on "Renewal: The need of hour for rejuvenating management education in India", said management schools should focus on producing globally competitive managers who can effectively run enterprises and deal with challenges facing Indian business and industry.

According to him, the main weakness of the Indian management education is the inability to take advantage of the Indian cultural heritage and develop a curriculum relevant to the Indian context. Very less effort is made to develop teaching methods and materials with direct relevance to contemporary Indian business world. Indian management education system depends on Western material for teaching without scrutinising their relevance to the objectives, needs and problems faced by managers of Indian enterprises.

He felt that there is a need to attract people with industrial background to academics.

Stating that management education was focusing more on the large-scale industrial and marketing sectors, he said the medium and small-scale industries have failed to find a place in management education. Laws to curb the mushrooming of management education, stricter norms and regulatory mechanism on infrastructure requirement and faculty development and collaboration with well-known B-schools abroad could help improve the quality of management education, Prof Rao said.

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