The Hindu Business Line : Teaching B-school teachers-to-be

Among the top factors hindering the country's management education system in achieving global standards, the most obvious one is lack of faculty. In numbers and in quality, Indian B-schools face a severe shortage of management teachers. Some schools though, like, ICFAI Business School are already at work in this area with a serious thrust on induction and training of management teachers for their centres across the country. At the ICFAI Institute for Management Teachers (IIMT), to-be management teachers go through a campus-based three-year course that trains students interested in management teaching, research and consultancy, leading to a Ph.D. In fact, students from the first batch that graduated in June 2006 have already started teaching at various ICFAI centres across the country.

The ICFAI Business School Director, Prof T.R. Venkatesh, says that B-school teachers have to be selected very carefully. "We give a serious thrust on induction of teachers. They are evaluated based on four abilities: to mould the careers of students, pursuit of knowledge, training in research and the level of interaction with industry." He calls the management teacher programme (MTP) an intellectual capital-sharing programme. And that's why students who enrol into the MTP are required to simultaneously pursue their Ph.Ds.

As students hail from various backgrounds, in the first year they get oriented to management subjects. In the second year, they start work on their research and get familiar with various pedagogy tools. In the third year, apart from handling teaching assignments at one of the ICFAI centres, students also visit affiliated universities in the US/UK and work under the guidance of a professor in the university. The visiting scholar programme gives international exposure to students, both in terms of their research papers and their teaching skills. Says Nitin Gupta, who was a visiting scholar at Syracuse University this year, "I have been able to give proper direction to my research ideas and got exposed to research work done in the US." After completing the course work, students are expected to join one of the research groups that are working in the areas of finance, strategy, marketing, HR, operations, economics, accounting, business law, IT, banking and insurance. The ICFAI Institute for Management Teachers has created a division with core members for research and development courseware, case studies and publications. Academic research centres are set up that will form the testing grounds for IIMT students.

"This will help them in the development of their doctoral dissertation," says Dr Avinash K Srivastav, Associate Dean (Research), The ICFAI Business School. "In fact, our teachers publish the highest number of papers every year," he adds. Last year, ICFAI teachers published 125 research papers in various management subjects.

Commenting on the commitment to continuous learning opportunities provided by the Institute, Prof Venkatesh says that the ICFAI faculty spends just about five hours teaching and the rest of the time researching and studying or interacting with industry. In other institutes, teachers are expected to spend at least 25 hours in classroom teaching. Says Prof Venkatesh, "We have put in rigorous steps for intellectual development of faculty. Also expectations from the faculty is properly set and we allow them to pursue these goals." In other words, teachers are given both freedom and flexibility to work on their thesis.

Teachers' salaries have always been a sore point and academia has lost many a great mindto the industry only for this reason. He explains ICFAI's stand on this: Students enrolling for the MTP are paid reasonably well (from Rs 15,000 per month the first year and up to Rs 21,000 per month in the third year). "There is no fee charged to the student and even the visiting scholar programme is sponsored by the Institute," says the Director. ICFAI spends close to Rs 12 lakh for the entire programme per student. "And that's why we expect the student to teach at one of our centres for five years at least," he says. After induction, the institute, like industry, believes in incentivised compensation packages for its teachers. Apart from the fixed component, the teachers get paid for every paper that is published and for various consulting jobs that they take up.

The MTP is held at four centres: Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkota and Mumbai. This year, over 2,000 students applied for the programme and 25 were selected.

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