MUNNA-M(ba) B(Grade) B(usiness) S(chool)

The global MBA curriculum has evolved and today has niche spaces, specialisations. The business institutions have built around the core subjects and now embed specialisations. The global finance management companies needed smarter business educated graduates to manage their portfolios. Harvard even today is specialised and has provided these specialists hired at huge entry level salaries. In India, MNCs have recruited fresh PGDM graduates from IIMs again with considerably huge entry salaries. Over a period, A business degree has become necessary entry level qualification. The Post graduate degree an additional advantage. With the increasing demand of business savvy graduates after liberalisation, many private institutes started to provide business education PG degree MBA.

The growth of the institutes created fall in standards and the classification of cream/premium of the institutions and the rest came into being.

Let's take the case of MUNNA-MBA from B Grade Business School (MUNNA-MBBS), what are his choices, what kind of career prospects does he have. I will take Munna, a graduate from somewhere in some subject, pursuing his MBA, expecting a placement assistance from his Business School to which he has paid heavy fees.

By the end of two years of his study, will he be a transformed, skilled, knowledgeable and employable MBA? 

The number of seats for MBAs are increasing, the quality is falling ,recently a report highlighted that only 10% of the fresh MBAs are employable. Where are we heading in Business Education with these standards where is India's Business Education headed.

Two instances require mention here, recently I was recruiting sales executives for my organisation, when I read resumes to recruit people for a sales jobs, most sales people want to project their resumes as marketing people rather than sales or sales with marketing knowhow and experience. A few sales people, with outright sales experience wanted to continue in sales, Good sales talent is not available in the market. The challenge was to get the talent and finally, we got the best. The best possible means to get the best sales talent was launched, several channels were put in motion to narrow down the best available.The whole identification, search and fulfillment revealed a great understanding of the underlying truth of the "Sales Job", MBAs we interviewed did not like sales jobs, lesser educated sales people wanted to pursue MBA to enhance their career paths to move away from sales. So much focus on marketing in MBA, Are there so many marketing jobs available, will the curriculum change to create something on sales and more intense. 

Another instance, a well known MBA institution, I have been associated with increased their intake for MBA, the quality of intake suffered, hence the output. Average student has learnt words like strategy, objectives, planning, marketing, advertising and relates to names of some brands. The understanding is shallow, in conceptual framework or in terms of application to situations. Voice is louder, content poor, presentation means slides of powerpoint. All reading is screen based, bullet points and digital. The culture of academic writing remains at the premier institutions.  Also the institution faces the challenge of finding placements for the unemployable. 

May be the MBA institutions in India, need to keep their first 2-3 months in teaching/training soft skills, communication, reading, writing, referring information sources, articulation, confidence building measures, presentation skills, problem solving from a general perspective. These skills along with the academic studies will help. These can be incorporated in the time table and improvement targets set and progress monitored.

Availability of good Internship opportunities is another issue, the companies have to build a system of taking interns, having the system of rotation to provide the required training to the interns. In another blog of mine, I have suggested that every Member of Parliament should have an Engineer and one Business Graduate as Interns.

The industry-academic connect needs a boost. Industry needs a solid reason to partner with academic institutions and institutions need to build the bridge. 

Another question that lingers is entrepreneurship training could be a better option, for two years, just focus on producing an entrepreneur. Work on the idea, strengthen it, evaluate the idea, revisit it, learning about it and incubating the idea is worthwhile for a business school. With an MBA student paying average fees of Rs. 5,00,000 per year, the starting salary expectation itself is a big barrier. I am not sure if a B grade Business School MBA will be able to produce the value to justify hiring. 

Should there be a MBA in entrepreneurship, again, not just to beat the placement challenge but in the true spirit and value. MUNNA-All the best. 

Higher Education, Everyone getting High on

Sibal is one of the best you got, He means action. He knows controversy and can handle it very well. Probably if you were to evaluate the value that is going to be created from/through his decisions in the education ministry, he could be called Kuber (The king of Wealth). He is convincing. He is clever, bright, intelligent, smart, knowledgeable, quick, witty, brainy, he is on the ball, he is sharp, He is thick (Antonym). Clever is first and all other following words are researched Thesaurus words to describe Sibal including the antonym. There has never before been a breeze of change like this before in the education ministry and the sector.

That is the reason the education sector is the discussion of this blog “Are you looking for a change”.
India, with one of the highest percentage of young population in the world, Sibal has got a solid mandate on hand to play, long term, mid-term and short term. The policy changes that are made in the past few years and the ones that are going to made and implemented in the coming few years will shape, what a nation, we will be. Sibal unlike his predecessors has a clear mandate, broad understanding and the political will power and support. Unlikely that he will make too many enemies, all likely that few policies will favor friend or to whomsoever the policy favored become friends. Structural changes are a must.

There are tiers of education system each with its brand of issues. Sibal has his mandate clear for the primary and secondary education systems, has got few aces up his sleeves now armed with few research findings, privatization is one clear mandate, and he will bring about in the professional education set up, an approach that will benefit the education sectors and hopefully the students.

No examination is another area that Sibal is trying to adapt at various levels in secondary education, with a system of grading, may be an idea worth its time to be tried, observed. Standardization

Foreign Universities is his ace for Higher education without any business interests, kudos, the idea is great. The foreign universities have already been taking a lot of higher education students abroad, close to around 1 lakh students go abroad for their higher education, spending an average of 10lakhs per year, The arithmetic is large, let me look for a calculator, which can accommodate more zeroes.

Look at some of these,

1. There were around 5,00,000 students appearing for the IIT exams competing for 9500 seats at the IITs, It must be one of the fiercest battle for knowledge/talent supremacy that you may come across in the world. The market size of the coaching spend for the IIT/AIJEE is Rs. 2,500 crores, some put the figure to be even higher, If you to put an arithmetic to it, In the coaching costs we may be able to establish few more IITs in the country every year. At this rate, the most lucrative offer that an IIT graduate could have would be from a coaching institute, who trains for IIT, because, he has been there, done that and recently. The coaching classes would easily compete with a MNC for a placement of an IIT graduate. If the objective of the IITs is to generate more scientific inquiry, have more IPs, more research work done, none of these objectives are being met. After the all the tech study, the students prepare for IIMs, join them and then move to US to join a Lehman Brothers.

2. Over 1200 Business Schools, over 1,00,00 MBA passing out every year, Ranking of MBA institutions is another big thing in the higher education field today. Newspapers, magazines are ranking MBA institutions by their best devised methods, much akin to a movie review with rating stars. The published report and its subsequent reprints are of great interests to the institutions. There will definitely be increase in copy sales and in a competition like that MBA institutes are facing, their advertisements budgets are swollen and can accommodate advertisements with many newspapers and glossy magazine covers. Fair and square inches.

3. The state can also play a role in education, sometimes Sibal and his official bandwagon may be too much for someone to handle at the centre, play it safe, get an University it from state anyway, it’s easier to play boss with local politicians and officials.

4. Azim Premji transfers his shares worth US $ 2 Billion towards education.