Friday, October 29, 2010

Fire, shoot and Aim-Business Education


When it comes to Business Education, it is like few blind men and an elephant; the description of each dependent on the part they are touched by. The stakeholders of business education are equally if not less, like the blind men. The students want placement at the end of the course, so the rush is to get into an institute that can provide opportunities for campus placements, the faculty realize that and have to really put together delivery mechanism that caters to the taste and also covers the statutory syllabus. The management of the private business schools are after better ranking, pure economics, ranking means increase in demand, the response to which you can either increase supply and/or increase pricing. The supply means you seek higher intake to create economies of scale and scope, use the infrastructure and the ranking to attract more intake and of course, better fees structure. The regulation of business education, has its own mechanism of how or how not to regulate. The standard rules and increased private participation is actually encouraged to bring quality into the business education system, while the outcome is divisions. So it is Fire, shoot and take aim.

Liberalization over the past two decades has seen the enterprise build in India, the private business got shot in the arm with changes in policy and system and broad measures to ease the way in which business is conducted. The business education now makes perfect sense, as for growth of an enterprise; we will need people with business understanding and knowledge.

Business education in the country hardly caters to the small and medium enterprises, which actually form the backbone of the economy. The business of business education is a subset of urban real estate. The MBA is an urban phenomenon, the colleges are mainly urban, hence migration to cities also will increase, and education becomes another reason for migration, which adds to increase in wage rates, when the wage rates increase, then the standards of employment, the overall growth of employment will all change.

The current state of business education with wide gap between premier, the B Grade, the foreign educated will bring concoction of what will be the business education in India, as we move forward.

Business education is turning out be a single species model in India, making it difficult to model sustainability. The international brand of education is here to stay, so also are the Indian brands. There are joint programs, there are twinning programs, and there are programs with one year here, another one there. International exchange is in student intake is big business. Collaborations of all kinds will be found. An university from another state operates more courses and has more students in other states than the state of origin. MBA is offered in morning, regular, evening, weekend, near distance, far distance, and postal, correspondence, offline and online, offered as certificate course, regular course, UG, PG and PGP, PDD and more D and P varieties.
Getting into a prestigious institution means placement, connecting with network of alumni, a lifelong reputation. With the combination of the factors, we have business education growing so rapidly in India, we have already fired the shots, let’s take aim to correct it.

MBAs should start to look for careers in politics, social entrepreneurship, government, SME segments. Our MPs will hopefully hire MBAs like their counterparts in the US as interns.