Management education needs to to get reoriented

It is that time of the year when students go into a frenzy, and parents go through bouts of angst. Those completing their higher secondary exams have to decide whether they would like to opt for management, medical, engineering or other courses. And while some of the brightest of students prefer to go for engineering or medical courses, a large majority opts for management courses. That is because, rightly or wrongly, many see management courses as giving students a higher market value. In order to understand the value-addition such management colleges offer students, DNA decided to call in a panel of experts, comprising (in alphabetical order), Dr. H.S. Cheema, CEO and Dean, Institute for Future Education Entrepreneurship and Leadership [iFEEL], Dr. R. Gopal, Director, Padmashree Dr. D.Y. Patil Universitys Department of Business Management,Dr. Dinesh D. Harsolekar, Director, Indian Education Societys Management College and Research Centre, Conrad A. Saldanha, Assistant Professor - Marketing, Don Bosco Institute of Technology - M.M.S. & Principal Advisor, Don Bosco Centre for Learning, Dr. Ankush Sharma, Associate Professor and Head - Management Studies (M.M.S.), Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, and Dr. Rakesh Singh, Director, Durgadevi Saraf Institute of Management Studies The discussion, moderated by DNA's R.N.Bhaskar highlighted the vision that most management colleges cherish and the challenges they face. Given below are edited excerpts: dna: We decided to have this panel discussion on management education because of the number of students opting for it. One reason is that students believe rightly or wrongly that doing this course could get him a higher salary or an easier placement. In my days, there were only two management schools in Mumbai. Today, the numbers have multiplied several fold. Can we have your views? Saldanha: I would like to state the following very briefly. First, that there is a huge gap between the management institutes and the industry. Many people have talked about it. There is a lot which is written about it. But I think it is a systemic challenge. The systemic challenge is that in the case of, say, the IITs or the IIMs, they have got a very, very tough and stringent entry point but their exit points are large. So you have vast exit points, tight entry points. You look at the CA. The CA has got a vast entry point, but very stringent exit points very stringent. Whereas if you look at an MBA, there is a wide entry point and there is a wide exit point. So in other words, it means you are not signaling to the industry that I am creating domain competence. Now, domain competence comes from focus. So there is an inherent systemic dysfunctionality in this whole MBA or higher education. This is my initial comment.

dna: Thank you. Harsolekar: During the last two decades, after 1990s, there has been a huge growth in the number of business schools or number of management institutes in the country. And that has posed lot of challenges to all stakeholders. Of course, some people say that maybe because of the growing number we are compromising on quality. Personally, I dont think that a large number means poor quality. It all depends on how do you regulate the quality and how do you ensure quality. So I would not say that the number is creating a problem of quality. But the number is posing other problems like the students are confused because, barring maybe the top 50-75 business schools in the country, it is difficult for students to identify the schools which they would like to enrol with. The second important challenge is getting good faculty because you get many faculty who are qualified on paper, but when they are put into the classrooms, somehow student acceptability is a big problem; a big question mark. Now, when we say good quality faculty, well, basically, were expecting expertise in two areas. One is they should be good teachers so that they are acceptable to students. The other is result orientation. Many people have entered the field of education after spending a few years in industry. Those few years may range from 10-25. And the thinking is: Enough! We have done enough work with industry, now we want to have something comfortable. And, therefore, we are in the field of education. When people come with this kind of mindset, I dont think they can do justice to students and to the process of education. A third problem is, of course, job opportunities cum placements. Because when there are so many options available to industry, it has become difficult for students to get the jobs which they want. Now, whether it is only because of number or whether there is a problem relating to a students capability or quality or whether management institutes are doing enough, are issues we can deliberate upon. But if you remember, maybe a week ago, the report on IIM placements, one could never imagine that IIM would report that 10% students are still left unplaced. Sharma: I think, it is very important for understand that any education has to relate to the learning outcome. We say that management education is an educational stream where theories are derived out of practice. Hence it is important for the faculty which is in teaching, must be research-oriented faculty or industry-oriented faculty . It is important to know how they are converting those current theories to current practices. That is very important when we look at it from the side of the students. The second important aspect is that learning outcomes also should be acceptable to the needs of industry. As we have already discussed, nowadays even premier business schools in India face the problem of placement. But there could be another way of looking at the same problem. What has happened during the last 10 to 12 years is that more management education schools have come up. One needs to look at demand and supply as well. That could be why, today, if a management student who is a fresher applies for a specific job he may find that there are other people who have work experience of two to three years applying f the same job. Laterals are available and may be at the same expected salary.

Because the current management students' expectations are also very high, there could be disappointment. So when I speak about learning outcome, I see industry experience interfering with the learning outcome. As you see in the US and other parts of the world, work experience is one of the mandatory criteria before anybody takes up management studies. And now that is the simple reason when the people who are having experience, they enjoy an edge in the market, as industry goes for them rather than recruiting a fresher. That is also why research too should be related to industry. I am aware that there are so many management institutes and every management institute has its own journal. But each one of us has to ask ourselves, whether industry goes through our findings in these research journals, and whether they implement some of these findings in their current practices. So there is definite need to bridge the gap between academics and industry. Management school faculty has also to work on and produce good industry-oriented research papers which industry finds acceptable and worthy of execution. In other words, we need to focus on intellectual capital, industry interface and research acumen. Bridging that gap between industry and academy is the need of the day. Singh: When you look at the rise of management education as a career-oriented education, you also find that it has been at the cost of social sciences. Earlier more people would opt for social sciences than for management education. Second, notwithstanding reports which talk about promoting skill development, the fact is that skill development and capability building in this country has been very low. We have necessarily made graduation as a basis for almost every kind of recruitment. Today management education has become the additional qualifying factor for most jobs. Hence management education has grown by leaps and bound and this mushrooming growth is a real cause of concern, frankly because when you as a student move there, you find that I have actually come to an undergraduate school with so much of expectations being created, and if expectations are unfulfilled, schools too get confused as to what they should offer. Actually speaking the kind of mass increase in number of business school itself goes against professional education. What youll have is a management graduate, who is functionally trained in so many areas that he is a jack of all and master of none. As a result, many are not picked up or found acceptable to industry because they do not get trained. The pedagogy that he goes through is like the undergraduate, the exposure he goes through is at the level of an undergraduate, the teachers he learns from are also meant for undergraduates and then you have false claims of placing everybody. Thus, we are fooling them to enroll with us, and this is the major threat that management education faces today. Cheema: Looking at the current scenario, I would like to say like that most of the guys are in a rat race of getting into an MBA school. And the biggest challenge for everyone is that if we can have a sustainable and employable candidate in the marketplace.

So sustainability and the employability is very crucial at this point of time. Now how we can have sustainability and the employability is the biggest challenge for all the B-schools. But now if you have to compete and be different down the line, because once international universities if they are allowed to be set up in India the competition will become fiercer. We are all regulated by a regulator in India, and if the same norms are not applied to foreign players, we may face a greater challenge. Ideally, we should have a national task force on a management education, a body which can form an all-India council for management education rather than having the same regulator for all streams [engineering and management and other streams, except medicine]. Can that be done? There are a number of B schools which have mushroomed and each one of them must find answers to the same question: How to provide quality education? dna: How many management schools are there, lets say in a city like Bombay? Harsolekar: Close to 80. Saldanha: All India, its 3,300. dna: How many students? Saldanha: Approximately 1.2 lakhs per annum. dna: All India? Saldanha: All India. Cheema: And technical graduates number 5 lakhs. dna: To help students know which management school is good will demand one of two options, one is you tighten the entry point, tighten the exit points or the second way to work out some system of grading of management schools so that automatically the student knows which school to go to first, and if he doesnt get admission there, then the second, the third, the fourth and so on. So you need a separate agency which grades B-schools. Your views? Saldanha: I think you have hit the nail on that. If you look at the evolution of this whole education system, you must realise that it began with colonialism. The British wanted a system that could produce people it could use in its administration. So you had an Indian but with a British mindset. So you have the administrative service. Then you had suddenly the whole aspect of technology and science. And then the economy and social harmony became more focused. So in other words, we were suddenly faced with a growth perspective, a strong trajectory for growth. In this growth perspective, we said okay, fine, management institutes? That provided the imeptus for producing more managers and that's how the IIMs started. . At some point of time, you are bound to realise that there are more management students being churned out than the number of managers required. But that is what happens when you experience organic growth. What we need now is to see how we can achieve inorganic growth. Now if you want to achieve inorganic growth, what does it mean? It means that instead of focusing the attention on employment and employability, we focus on becoming or making students employers. So when you focus the attention on becoming employers, then you are encouraging innovation, you are encouraging

entrepreneurship, you are encouraging inorganic growth. A whole shift takes place, so your organic growth will be satisfied with certain management you know churning out of students who will you know be captured by the various institute; but this shift needs to take place. Harsolekar: I think tightening exit point is more important according to me. If we look at the result record of various business schools, you will find different universities have different systems. In a typical management education there are broadly two schemes One that is university affiliated, the other one is independent autonomous. So one is the university approved MBA degrees, the second is the PGDM programme [Indian School of Business or ISB is also a PGDM course]. Now even in university affiliated programmes different universities have different systems. For example, a certain university may have say 20% of the paper [through an exam] conducted by the university, while the rest remains with the institute. Someone will say first year remains with the institute, while the second year is done by the university, and so on. In some university exams you will find 100% of the students passing in the first year, which is impractical and difficult to believe. Hence this year we have focused on: how do you improve that quality of education and then make students to go through a rigorous assessment evaluation examination process so that only those who deserve only get passing grades. dna: In other words while the entry point can remain wide, at the exit point you need stronger evaluation techniques. Singh: I disagree completely with this particular arrangement. We definitely need a very, very optimal entry point. You need to see that the students can be groomed as managers; that they have the capability to turn out as managers. What is happening currently at least what I have seen during the last 3-4 years ever since I took over as Director of Durgadevi Saraf is that most of them who come through our CET processes or CMAT processes, cannot actually qualify to be managers in the future. Now this is one fundamental things that we need to take care of. Schools should have some degree of freedom to select and some schools should have some binding basic minimum requirements that are needed to become a manager. Because what is happening is that you train this guy, he gets Rs10,000 per month, and later he gets Rs15,000 a month after two years of study and an investment of Rs4 lakh. Now this is something that needs to be taken care. Exit point, yes. Having a tight exit point is a very, very good thing to have, but it is not a function of examination. It is a function of the way you deliver your curriculum and education and the way you groom them. In the process, for instance, if you have a very strong case study system, you could teach for two hours, and relevant work experience of four hours. If you dont do that, the system will collapse. I have seen this being done in good business schools, like Great Lakes in the US where I studied. Now this is what it does, good pedagogy, good curriculum, good faculty, challenging, peer group and a very, very demanding evaluation system which evaluates not for examination, for your fitness in the industry. Do you have the ability to emulate this? If we dont orient our education towards this, well end up into being just another undergraduate college. At Durgadevi what weve done is very interesting. We say that you dont

qualify for placements. You need to have a minimum grade point with so many other extracurricular activities and only then you quality. Out of 130 students only 82 have qualified for placements. Cheema: I agree that the entry and exit points should be controlled. Unfortunately, in MMS youll pay for a particular test -- CAT, MAT, CMAT, so on and so forth -- and you get an entry on the basis of the scores obtained into an institute which cannot reject you. So you have no choice in the institutes that are allocated to you, and we have no choice in terms of taking the kind of talent we desire. But in PGDM, yes both the ends can be tighter. The reason is that both entry and exits are controlled by an autonomous body. Now when we are talking in terms of an exit point, there needs to be a holistic learning approach. Basically whats happening is that we are getting more into theoretical aspects and practical exposure is not given most to the candidate. Then there is a point in terms of the product which goes out. So, when we are talking in terms of the curriculum, it is designed sometimes, for a 9 to 5, back-to-back, lectures. We need to modify this into, for example, lectures for one or two days, and then work at the market place for the next one or two days. Then the student comes back for lectures and goes back to work. In todays scenario whats happening is that students come out with 70%, 80% scores and no one fails. But that has an adverse effect in terms of placement. Sharma: When we put academic rigor in place, then definitely performance will improve, because nowadays those days are gone where we can say that the students will belong to the corporate world when they start working. With business schools, the students are in the corporate world as soon as they enter into a business school. When there are two years in a business school their work experience has already started. It is perform or perish; the rigour in terms of understanding the value of academics and the work world of a corporate. For the faculty, in addition to teaching there is the other P&P -- publish or perish. Gopal: The objective of a management school is that it should not be a finishing school. Now, what really happens, you have a programme with you. Can you devise a programme, which is a niche programme meant only for that particular sector? Because, for example, what do all the colleges have today? Marketing? Finance? HR? Systems? Operation? Finish? Full stop. Can we have something for the sports business for instance? Can we have something for retail management? Can we have something for biotech? Can we have something for bioinformatics. And how do you begin with this? You just dont think about it from the air. Lets say, retail business is growing rapidly, biotech is growing rapidly. Like what we did, we have a board of studies meeting, where the board comprises of people from the industry. Now they come there, they have their interaction right in the beginning; the syllabus is formulated by them. There is a tie-up which takes place at that point of time, since that guy is already from the industry. He says fine. I come. I send my people to teach in your class. Others also come in, they also come in and teach from other sectors, lets say retail Pantaloon could come in and Globus could come in.

They take a couple of lectures. The core lecture are taken by the full time faculty. These corporate experts come in as additional guest lecturers and all of that. Since these guys are already on the board of yours. So you can say, okay, they will take one or two people [to be interns at their workplaces]. Then comes the final second year. Since these guys are already on the board, they also say okay, as now they know the students more or less. There is a chance a relatively good chance because none of these institutions like Globus or Pantaloon or ICICI are willing to commit that they will at the end of two years take the students in. Theyre not willing to commit. Excepting, of course, the insurance sector, because they need people there is a solid demand. The demand is not for being a product manager in insurance sector. But the demand is for being a sales representative for the insurance sector. And there is a huge demand for it, thats why theyll say, yes, we will take them. But the others are not willing to do it. But at least now with this interaction, these guys have got a chance to understand what the industry needs. Industry has a chance to look at them and that is how, for example, we have been able to achieve our 100% placement. Im not saying 100% guaranteed placement, but Im saying weve been able to achieve our 100% placement. dna: Nobody gives a guarantee. Guarantee is a wrong word to use here. Gopal: Absolutely. This is the only method if you really want industry-institute interaction to move forward. Singh: And what we have been always intermixing with if you look at all global schools, you have something where its like a finishing school like what ICICI and Symbiosis are trying to do. Then you have a general MBA programme, which is marketing or placement assisting and which is where a large number of good guys come in, they interact, they have a multi-functional approach. And the third set is Executive MBA, which is essentially where you have people from various industries coming together. And creating a classroom, which is vibrant, its just not about learning and employee ability, its about vibrancy. And they all go back to industry. They actually there is no there is nothing called employability in that. So thats a high end model which is constantly upgrading itself.
Saldanha: Can I add something out here? This executive MBA programme that youre really talking about, okay, is something which is meant only for people who are employed in an organisation.

Singh: Obviously, yes. Saldanha: They are not looking for jobs. What are they looking at? They are looking at some value addition in terms of knowledge, in terms of understanding and what advantage do they get, (A) they get good knowledge, (B), when there is a tie-in of promotion within theorganization or when they shift from one organization to another organization and they say look Ive done my MBA. It helps them in getting a better position.

And what are we talking about. We are talking about we are saying zero experience that means they are basically raw.
Singh: What I meant was that these are the three different segments and they have to be treated very differently. The finishing school is something which is emerging in this country. Then, maybe, a supply chain school. There may be a retail school.

Ultimately, what is my experience in looking at these is that people move more towards the general MBA. Students prefer this sector of programme, they are the low-end programmes. Now there is an advantage, good

people come in, the peer group is good, theres huge amount of learning from peer groups, even with the zero experience. A good batch is a great batch to learn from, for professors as well.
Saldanha: I want to restrict myself to just two year MBA.

Now when Im looking at the two year MBA, Im seeing it also, once again, on the evolution cycle. So in an evolution cycle there are two things, one is that you go on the platform of differentiation and synthesis. So therefore the whole of evolution has gone on the basis of differentiation and then synthesis. So just now we are experiencing the need for intense differentiation and specialization. So you have an MBA degree which gives you a generic base, which is general. So I say okay, fine Ive done my MBA in marketing. But does it have any domain expertise attached to it? Does it have any domain competence attached to it? No. So therefore, necessarily I have to go into a differentiated, niche oriented domain expertise or digital marketing, which is linked by what was said to industry. So, if I align the entire curriculum, the entire evaluation in terms of faculty, in terms of pedagogy, if I align it with industry and I say okay fine, these are industry standards, then automatically, automatically my entry point, my exit point, my throughput process gets tighter, so you decide every point so the industry gets involved in my curriculum. Which is what you also suggest. But there is a danger here. When I focus so much on specialization, which is evolution again, then there is a tendency to die out because you are so narrowly focused, that you need a larger base, you need a larger canvas to grow the richness. Now here is what is happening. Some of the other management courses are linked to a quantitative orientation. So in this quantitative orientation what is happening is you are reducing strategy to a basic metric. Now strategy is based on human people and people are complex. So therefore the entire arts field or you know the various arts and design or whatever it is, that is getting lost in this whole kind of canvas, which we are seeing off. So I think a balance has to be maintained. So in other words if you see Stanford or even IIM. They teach leadership through Leo Tolstoys war and peace. So therefore one is saying that you need a balance between creating that larger canvas, which is rich and also has the industry focus, which will not only give you this tightening, but will also provide you opportunities for creating employer oriented [students]. This way, employer oriented is not just focusing on ICICI or Pantaloon and linking it to courses [which is what finishing schools do]. Employer oriented is you become an entrepreneur. You get an innovation mindset. Today the country is in need of two things. One is skilled manpower. So you have a lot of demand and people are complaining there are no jobs. There is a mismatch, because the skills part is lacking. An MBA feels that it is below his dignity to to do some electrical work. Today, what we have done in our institute is we have got the MBA students to take up occasional skills, so they learn electrical, they learn an electrician job. dna: You have an advantage. Yes [because Don Bosco has a vibrant vocational training centre as well Editor].

Saldanha: They learn auto mechanics.So in other words it means you are blending professional education with vocational skills. So then what happens is that my professional education gets enhanced, because then I realize how I am able to translate theory into practice immediate. Gopal: So the point is the point is if you look at todays guys who are coming for admission. Forget the IIMs for a minute. The IIMs would blend this towards quantitative and therefore they are all quantitative. But if you look at any class today, the engineers are very small in number. And I believe and there could be a personal bias also because I am basically an engineer. I believe that engineers are by and large maths oriented, quantitative oriented. But in an MBA class, youll find there are just four, five, six, seven, engineers. Most are from the BA category, the B.Sc category, the B.Com category, which is very, very weak in mathematics and if there is one subject which all the MBA students hate, it is maths. But they are very good at, talking from the heart, in conceptualizing. Number two, when you have courses which are more towards industry and niche oriented, do they lose out into bargain, the answer is no. Why? Because even in all these, if I take lets say the biotech management, its a very diverse compared to the general management. Take the first year of management studies. Out of the 10 plus 10, 20 subjects that we have on an average, there are about 15, 16 subjects relate to basic management. The base is the same and therefore the guy who has done retail management is very comfortable working in a logistics company, hes very comfortable working in any manufacturing organization, because the basics are in place. And in the second year, again out of the 20 subject that you have, you have about eight to 10 subjects which are again sector specific It is basically the application of the principles of management to that particular sector. Now do these applications of management change? The answer is no. Whether it is retail or whether it is logistics, it works out to the same thing, but only there is a slight difference in the application. That is the second important point which I want to make. The third important point, if you go back, even in places like IIMs where they have a subject called entrepreneurship management, the number of people who want to get into this entrepreneurship management is quite low. And the reason is very much there. The reason is because not many people have the financial resources to become entrepreneurs. This is different from Western India where you find lots of people who belong to A category or B plus category, and they have lot of money with them. But on the central side, that we are, there are lots of people who do not have that much of money with them, and then therefore just 4, out of a class of 360 students that I have, opted for entrepreneurship, And therefore, you also teach them basic things because you know they are actually looking out for a job. Cheema: Now, all the relevant base schools provide a certain curriculum that is common across domains. It is only from the second year that the specialization starts. But what is value addition? Now here we are not talking in terms of getting into core entrepreneurship, and where you start your own entrepreneur. Can you be in work as an entrepreneur in an organization? Can you work as an leader in an organization? Thats very important. So value addition should be more towards entrepreneurship and leadership qualities which are being included in the curriculum itself.

Now, what we do is to work very closely with models promoted by CCL Center for Creative Leadership where students are made to work on certain social entrepreneurship live projects. So can we create an entrepreneurship drive in these students through that same curriculum how those theoretical aspects are converted into practical aspects. So entrepreneurship not purely in terms of starting their own venture, but in terms of how you can take an entrepreneurship, while working within an organization. Sharma: I think as we say in cricket, whenever there is an out-of-form batsman, the best solution is to get him to check out his basics. And I think when we are talking about that what is going to the future of management education, it is very important for us to understand and to check out our basics. And I think industry orientation as well as industry understanding is required to help us to understand, and to check out our basics. What does this mean? Industry people have to come and have to tell the students the ground realities. Most MBAs think that they need a six-digit salary and that they need an air-conditioned cabin. And somebody has to tell them that this is not possible in most cases. When we talk about specialization, marketing students say that they are not willing to do a sales job. Finance students are not willing to do a marketing or financial services job. Operations students, they are not keen on going to the shop floor and working there.Human resource students are not keen in working in a recruitment industry and system students are not keen in working as administrative managers in an IT Company. But if industry comes and tell them, boss, at the end of the day it is for you to do your work and that joote ghisne padte hai (you have to wear out the soles of your shoes) you begin learn the basics. And if you do not know some aspects of sales, it is very difficult for you to understand marketing. If you are not understanding how to sell financial services, it will be difficult for you to understand finance. If industry comes and helps us correct our perceptions and om checking out these basics, I am certain that our problems will be addressed in a right way. We at Vidyalankar School of Business follow this strategy. We have a tie-up with Harvard Business School. But one major problem which each one of us faces is that students want to do a job where they think they will be required only to make a power point presentation. Actually, as someone once said, e is power in the point, you dont need a power point. Harsolekar: The only way out is continuous innovation by business schools. Looking at what market requires. So today what market needs is maybe different from what it will need tomorrow. Therefore business schools have to be in continuous touch with industry and keep in touch with what is happening there, what are the changes coming in, what are their needs and keeping that in mind there should be continuous innovation of the pedagogy, the curriculum, the teaching methodologies, the content and things like that. Gopal: Given the ground reality that the students really want to become Vice Presidents and Senior Vice Presidents of tomorrow, its nice to have people from industry coming and trying to brainwash them. But the problem remains that many of the students today [are a pampered lot]. I have an example. The girl is staying at Pali Hill in Bandra. She says sir; Thane is very far from Pali Hill, how can I go to Thana and work out there?

Salary is 40,000 rupees, or almost 5 lakhs of rupees. Todays generation is not keen, unlike my generation. I used to travel from Parel to Thana spending 20 minutes by train and Im talking about 1976 where you didnt have the train frequency. I had to then take a bus to Bush India Limited and start working. Todays generation says I want everything at my desktop and I want everything close to my house, I dont want to work. We have classes, we have sessions from guest lectures who are our own alumni. But somewhere there is a mindset which is different. Now how do we really come out of this? We are experimenting. What we are trying to do is giving live projects to the students, and also saying Work. So weve divided the whole day into two-day sessions, into a morning batch and afternoon batch. And in the process we have said, During the afternoon you get out of the college, to the industry. We have already discussed with the industry what project et cetera. Come back, make a presentation and then you get your grades. Second, when it comes to pedagogy we have opted for a deemed university status as we get get some flexibility. Do we have the right faculty? And the answer is, we dont have the right faculty. They meet the prescribed norms. But the good teachers who know the subject very well are not interested in teaching. So, who is interested in teaching? Mostly female members. And only a couple of them are really seriously interested in teaching. Saldanha: When you look at the whole model of education, the model of education is 19th century. So you have a 19th century of model of education, with a faculty which has possibly a 20th century mindset -- if not a 19th century mindset and they are preparing students for the 21st century. You thus have a total kind of mismatch. Second, I think the modern generation lives in a different world, a totally different world. Alvin Toffler together with Heidi Toffler his wife has written a book title Revolutionary Wealth. In that book he says, if you point a speed gun at the different constituencies of life coming at you, business is traveling at 100 miles per hour. Education is travelling at five miles per hours. And the lowest is law, which is travelling at two miles per hour. So if you look at the gap, it means that industry and this generation, which we are talking about is living in a different world, its not a generation gap its a world gap. And we are not willing to think it through and say, okay, fine I really do not understand that world, now let me learn from them, let me understand their world, and let me understand the world of the industry, and with all humility say, okay, fine, now let me try and re-evaluate. We are trying to impose our own structures, because we have been developed on those structures. So its the culture of the alphabet, fighting against the culture of electricity. The culture of the alphabet is what I have been brought up on, and the children are living today in a culture of electricity, it's digital. They are two worlds apart, and still our academic system is trying to impose the alphabet on to electricity. Obviously, problems will occur. dna: So you are trying to say, we have to reinvent new paths. Saldanha: Totally, totally. Gopal: The other problem is that somewhere, someone decided that we need 1 lakh MBA students every year.

So someone else said lets start new schools everywhere. When it comes to the city of Mumbai, we can still manage. I can get faculty and infrastructure. But if I go to some Talegaon, if I go to some gaon [village] somewhere because the authorities are keen on increasing the number of schools in these Class B and Class C towns where are you going to get faculty. And then what happens, you dont have faculty, you produce a child, who is raw or semi-raw, who is not fit to be in the industry. And then you say, the whole MBA system is bad. The MBA system is not bad. Its only how you implement that system that is bad. Cheema: It is time we had a national task force for management education. A body that knows what management education is all about, and how it should be structured. Can we think in terms of coming up with a national task force on Gopal: I don't agree. Because, you know, we already have too many of these committees. And the purpose of a committee is only not to take decisions. The solution is individual colleges working out innovative ways under the existing guidelines: (A) by insisting on more guest lectures with you. Call people from the industry. (B) More conferences, panel discussions with industry experts. We could have two people from our faculty and one from the industry coming in and discussing an industry, and issue. Can we have live projects? What prevents you from giving live projects to students? Singh: We need rules to be a bit more flexible. They should consider outcomes and ratings of management institutions more seriously than actually defining the entry point at which admissions should take place. Then, I think we need to look at the curriculum. What is very important is that the proper sequencing, integration and holistic approach towards understanding management is focussed on. We also need to break away from the silo mindset. Marketing is a silo. Operations is a silo, strategy is a silo. There is no cross-function integration Our schools are so local in their orientation that they dont even know what is happening in the world. The world is changing. The world view is changing. We dont provide students a global perspective. We dont have geopolitics and business as an orientation. We dont have, for instance, a course on global business environment. I think there is a huge amount of integration with the ecosystem thats required. Sharma: I just want to add one point. Sometimes, when there is too much of discussion, too much of analysis, it can lead to a paralysis.More of analysis is more of paralysis. I still maintain that if we check out our basics and if we keep our basics right, everything else will follow. Just do the basics right. Harsolekar: When there is a problem and there are various stakeholders, I think solution doesnt lie only with one stake owner. So it is very easy to blame the regulator, then there are lots of other stakeholders. Everybody has to make an effort; if we see some problem then we have to find the solution. But the biggest problem according to me is is the need to attract better faculty because if that is taken care of curriculum, teaching standard etc, all get taken care of. The rules on how to select faculty need to change.

Teaching is a skill, research is a passion. You know, people who have this passion to do research, people who have the skill to teach, they should be motivated to get into this profession. It may not be somebody who has a fantastic percentage of marks in his post-graduation and Ph.D. and all that. So flexibility in the appointment of faculty is required. Saldanha: Over-regulation is also a danger. It may lead to a point where people will devise means to act outside the regulatory framework. Cheema: Last one more point all these rankings brought out by publications are all humbug. Singh: But the student has a mental ranking of colleges already