The Hindu Business Line : B-school system under scanner

Nowhere in the world is management education as fragmented as it is in India. In terms of sheer numbers, the statistics read like this: Some states like Delhi and Maharashtra have close to a hundred B-schools each, the eastern states of Assam, Manipur and Nagaland have just a couple of them. Currently, Bihar has just 1,050 students pursuing a management course ie, about 1.16 student for every one lakh student population is studying to be a B-school graduate. The national average hovers around 8.52 for every lakh of student pool, with Delhi having the highest number of students in B-schools: 22.52 for every one lakh student pool.

Course fee in management education institutes stretches across a wide spectrum: from $1500 per annum to a whopping $30,000 per annum. It would be difficult to calculate the average salary a B-school graduate could expect in the country. An IIM graduate last year walked away with a Rs 1 crore per annum pay packet while graduates of a B-school from any of the smaller towns were negotiating for Rs 1 lakh per annum salary. If you take B-school ratings, the quality difference between the first and the 100th is significant. While CAT hogged the headlines across the country last week, experts believe that management education in India needs a serious rethink.

Speaking at a conference on `Management Education: An International Comparison,' organised by Xavier Institute of Management, in Bangalore, recently, Prof Damodar Acharya, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education, pointed out to some of the weaknesses in the country's B-school education system. About two lakh students took the CAT last week and about 1,500 students would be qualified to enter the precincts of the IIMs. Perhaps another 8,000 would use these scores to gain admissions into other premier B-schools across the country. Currently, about 94,700 students are studying to be managers in the country. And the rate of demand for management education is expected to grow by 15 per cent every year.

Barring a few, there's no doubt most Indian B-schools are operating more as extensions of commerce departments. They need to be more business-focussed and less academic, felt speakers at the conference.

Listing lack of work experience and industry-academia interaction as two of the main drawbacks in the Indian B-school education systems, Prof Acharya, stressed the need for industry exposure for students before they get onto a B-school bandwagon. There are colleges offering business administration courses even at the under-graduate level. "Are these students in a position to appreciate what is being taught?" he asks.

Lack of industry-academia interaction both at the student and the faculty level is an issue, he feels. Most of the university-level management courses are born out of commerce departments and therefore the same faculty is used. "There is not adequate teaching staff," feels Prof Acharya. Most of the teachers are focussed on teaching concepts rather than on knowledge creation and practice, they way they would teach in a university.

Prof Shekhar Chaudhuri, Director, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, pointed out that there was a shortage of high-quality faculty even at IIMs. "This is because of low salaries and low emoluments for doctoral programme students." Scarce government resources for creation of additional infrastructure would come in the way of higher intake of students, he said.

Like all premier business schools across the world, credit accumulation has to be introduced in management education here, felt experts. "Students have to be offered the option of completing the course over a prolonged period," recommended Prof Acharya.

Subir Raha, former CMD, ONGC and President, All Indian Management Association, emphasised the role played by distance education in the country. "It (distance education) is not something to be sneered at. When there's such a shortage of faculty, it is a valuable tool. With a single set of faculty, distance education can reach out to a much larger batch of students," he said.

Commenting on course content, Prof Acharya felt that specialisations in management education would defeat the purpose of a holistic approach toward education. Agreeing with this, Dr Devi Singh, Director, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, said that MBA programmes have the best impact when they teach the framework, rather than when they offer specialisations like retail, banking, insurance and so on. "High-quality research is another area that is neglected in most B-schools," he felt. Prof Acharya endorses the view. "Research has taken a backseat in management education. No new knowledge is being added."

Management education experts also feel that this is the time to study Indian cases in management education. "Our B-school education is dominated by Western philosophies and we need to rethink on this," according to Prof Chaudhuri.

Entrepreneurship and soft skills development are two vital areas that are grossly neglected in Indian management education. Ashok Sinha, CMD, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, said that the challenges in management education today are very different from what they were thirty years ago. "Management education does provide knowledge and technical skills, but most of them are neglecting the soft skills aspect. While technical skills get measured, leadership, collaborative thinking, communication and mentoring also should be measured," he recommended.

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