Management Education Scenario

Ask any MBA aspirant why he wants to do MBA and the answers follow predictable lines. Everyone wants to work in a multinational company and earn a fat salary, or is preparing for it since friends are into it. Few actually know what to expect from the profession. Almost everybody talks of a cousin or friend who has made it big in some company or the other.

It is no wonder that the average student and even people in other professions and jobs have caught the MBA bug. When making money has become the central objective of life, who wants to be stuck in a career that offers less?

Lack of information and counselling results in young people applying in hordes whether they have the aptitude or not, and the mushrooming of sub-standard institutes catering to the demand, which provide MBA degrees that can only be described as worthless. Very often, a person finds that the MBA degree does not get the promised job in the multinational and frustrations arise. Moreover, if every MBA were to be taken by the multinationals, who would work for the Indian companies, some of which are as good as, or even better, than any multinational?

Management education in the country can roughly be divided into four groups. At the top are the reputed institutes and some university departments which have maintained the high quality of their education. The second rung institutes are those started by industrial houses, which offer some surety of a job after the course. The third rung are university departments which have not been able to impart quality education but can provide jobs in regional industrial groups. The fourth rung are those institutes which have neither the advantage of low fees of a university nor the backing of an industrial house. In recent times, a number of academics, retired people, politicians and others have started such institutes which remain essentially money making devices.

Which institutes should one, apply for? Obviously, the competition for the top institutes is great, since eveybody wants to do the MBA from one. There is no surety of getting in. It is, therefore better to spread risks and apply for institutes which are lower down also. One should not apply to many of them, since each application costs about Rs 1000 and applying to all would mean spending a small fortune. Depending on one's ability and confidence, one should select one or two institutes from each group and apply accordingly. Of course, the prospects and jobs decrease as one goes down to the lower rung institutes.

Students also have a problem in assessing an institute. There are several yardsticks available and one should not go by the beautifully printed prospectus that they have. Some important considerations are: whether the institute has a permanent faculty and whether the faculty is professionally qualified. Many institutes depend on contractual, part time faculty members. The commitment of the part-time teacher is never total. Others depend on researcher-type teachers who have no idea how real businesses operate. What is required, instead, are people who have a practical orientation and experience.

One should also check which jobs the institute is able to get for its graduates. Usually, some students geet good jobs using their own contacts, which the institute then prints in its prospectus. It is important to see how industry rates the institute.

Unfortunately, the student has no way of getting this information. There is no rating agency and each institute makes tall claims about its degree. The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has given its approval to many institutes without going into their merits. This has caused great problems for students who have no yardstick to go by except the AICTE approval, which does not mean a thing. The situation is further complicated by the fact that some are worthless institutes; recently some of them have been sent notices by the MRTP? Such institutes not only have very high fee, but use the 'NRI Quota' to circumvent the law on donations and only take in students who can pay more. The degrees awarded by them are quite useless.

But these are not questions that bother the MBA aspirant. Clearing the entrance test and joining the course are the immediate hurdles and it is commonly believed that once a person gets in he will most certainly become an MBA. Contrasted with courses for Chartered Accountant or Company Secretary, where some people get caught in the trap of rrepeating groups of papers, the MBA is a safe option.

Not surprisingly, the sense of achievement in the MBA student is very high. The course becomes one huge ego trip. Many students do not spend as much time on their training as they should, thinking that the MBA stamp will take them through jobs. This is only partially true. No company takes a person for his label alone, but for what he can contribute. The MBA is chosen for his professionalism and his training, his skills and his ability to manage. The two years of training are therefore best spent in acquiring these skills.

How are these skills acquired? First, it requires gathering knowledge and insight. Many students are used to their undergraduate classes where notes are made and some questions are mugged up near the exams, which is enough to see them through. The management course is unlike any of those courses. Application of knowledge and not mere bookish knowledge is required. That is why the good institutes by emphasis on case discussions and group assignments.

The student must learn everything that may be required in business situations. A good personality should be developed. Unfortunately, many lower-rung institutes and university departments do not have facilities for personality development or teachers trained in group methods. The result is a stunted MBA which no good company would liketo touch. It is thus important to do the course from a reputed institute.

The bad institutes do not insist on hard work simply because they are not committed. There is emphasis on partying and having a good time. Many institutes in Delhi and elsewhere are known for such activities. To hide their shortcomings, they have collaborations with fancy sounding foreign universities and introduce exotic courses like yoga, spiritualism and "Eastern Management". One institute advertises a golf course and swimming pool on its campus. The corporate sector is usually not impressed by such gimmicks.

Many students come to grief when they find that their expensive diplomas are not good enough to get them jobs. In many institutes, the toppers get the good jobs but the average students have to accept lower offers. Youngsters who believe that merely the MBA label is a ticket to the good life face serious adjustment problems and frequent change of jobs. The MBA, in fact, should be treated only as a time to prepare for the corporate world.

A good institute, on the other hand, puts pressure on the students to be on their toes and updated in their subjects at all times. Graduates report that in certain semesters they get very little sleep, so hard is the pressure to perform. Tests are announced at the last moment when the students are preparing to sleep, so that a person must be updated in all subjects at all times. Case studies enhance the applicability of concepts and theory to real life situations. This results in a person acquiring professional competence. Ultimately, the MBA must be seen as preparation for entry into the corporate sector.

A competitive spirit must also be developed. A corporate career is not one for comfortable jobs and the sooner a person acquires the competitive spirit, the better off he will be.

Since any job in a company will require a person to make presentations and to convince others, a person must learn presentation skills and be a natural leader. Ability to take good decisions under pressure is also required. Many skills, such as quantitative analysis, are learnt from books but analysis of business situations is also required. This is done through case studies.

The summer training is another method of using the knowledge in real life situations. The training should be used as an opportunity to prove oneself and some meaningful work should be done. Professional competence is rewarded when the summer training results in an offer of a permanent job on completion of the degree. In this way, many students find jobs during their summer training, much before the actual completion of their course.

A student must keep a level head even though everybody he meets says that clearing the entrance test was a big achievement. The real achievement is to come after two years when jobs are required. The years in the institute should be utilised to learn the skills in the best possible way. If the student is not busy enough, the MBA degree will be worthless even though it may have a fancy name.

One of the myths that students have is that they will become senior managers the moment they complete the MBA. Certain companies have found that expectations and ambitions of MBAs are difficult to meet and they have taken policy decisions not to hire fresh MBAs. Though the MBA is a coveted degree, it becomes important to keep a level head and keep one's expectations low. According to the hype, an MBA is a senior manager, but fresh MBAs are usually taken at the level of management trainees. Initially, some low and tedious work may have to be done.

If a student is not reconciled to this, frustrations are bound to arise. Job hopping is common, which ultimately hurts the career of the youngster. Further, the company too has its expectations from the management graduate to whom it is paying a high salary. The second part of the article will describe what is expected of the MBA in a company. Somewhere, the expectations have to be reconciled for the high growth career of management to be a success.

Rapid expansion of Industries in India has opened new vistas for excellent opportunities of careers in management. New Economic Policy of liberalisation and decontrols has increased the demand for managerial personnel in the corporate sector. Advent of multinational companies, which has just begun, may further increase the quest of the industrial sector in all fields of management like Finance, Production, Marketing, Personnel and Administration.

The careers in management offer one of the best remuneration package in the country, particularly in the private sector. Recent decision of the Government to raise the upper limit of monthly salary to the managers to Rs 50,000 has made careers in management even more attractive. In addition to best of the salaries offered by this career, it also offers outstanding developmental opportunities to enable the competent and dynamic managers to rise to the level of Chief-executive. Several Indian professionals today are working as Managing Directors in many multi-nationals. Management professionals from India are also in good demand in international market. Private sector today offers rapid advancement to result-oriented professionals. Excellent perks are offered which may include free accommodation free conveyance/attractive conveyance allowance, CPF, leave travel concession, medical allowance/reimbursement etc.

Those who prefer Public Sector Undertakings (PSU), may join these undertakings at several levels. The managerial hierarchy and pay-structure in most of the PSU's is pre-determined and also includes some perks, though not as attractive as offered by the private sector.