The Hindu Business Line : <I>Education metropia </I>

It is well-known that B-schools are the source of fundamentals of management. Indeed, it has to be that way too. For that is the purpose of having B-schools. And to say the least, the duty has been exceedingly well performed. Listen to any English channel; more often than not, each is spewing jargons from the business world.

Indeed every field is filled with these jargons. Yet, the education sector can take one more. That is `Education Metropia'. (Hyper)Metropia is a dysfunction of the eye wherein a person can see things that are at a distance from the eye but not those close to it. Some thing similar is happening in education too. The irony is that many a concept taught in B-schools are not practised by the institutions themselves, rendering the system hypocritical.

We can safely assume, under present circumstances, that the management education philosophy is based on the capitalistic, market-based system, which thrives on demand and supply.

It is implicit that if the offering is good there will be takers and there need be no extra coercion to induce the public. But is that really what we practise in management schools?

FORCED ATTENDANCE

There are a couple of striking examples. The first is the issue of attendance. In India, even in top-notch management schools attendance is compulsory. It is to the extent of 90 per cent in many schools: The more elite the B-school, the higher the level of compulsory attendance. This is how it is from the top B-Schools downward. Let us analyse this. Students are admitted to premier B-schools after a stringent entrance tests and are called the crème-de-la-crème of the country.

Are we saying that they do not have the common sense to understand market economy? Are they not mature enough to understand whether a professor is worth listening to or not?

Given that there are various methods of evaluation, they should ideally be able to weigh those options and put forward their cause for passing the course. Under these conditions how will market economy work in India if even the "cream" fails to understand it?

An analysis reveals that either the professors are not good enough and are worried that, sans compulsory attendance, their classes will remain empty, or they are conveniently forgetting what they are preaching (market-based approach/demand-supply economics).

We are strategising but not micro-analysing, it would seem; the same mistake is happening all over the country in economic development (vis-à-vis equitable growth).

COMPULSORY SPECIALISATION

When we come down the ladder of institutes we find that compulsory specialisations are being rolled out. After having paid the fees, are the students not entitled to study what they want to, rather than be forced to take up a particular branch of study? This happens in many of the management institutes in India.

One can easily say that there are minimum credits that you require and then the option to specialise should be left free according to market economy or else the prospectus should spell out clearly the reality. This will stabilise the market offering. It seems B-schools are going the "fine print" way in designing the courses.

Is it that for B-schools the dictum `practice what you preach' is not quite in.

(The author is a Kochi-based management consultant.)