Management Education Crisis - Is Indian MBA Degree Losing Its Sheen?

Management is a much sought after field of education for Indians. The trend to pursue a degree in management is not new, this has been so from the past decade and still is the same and ever increasing. This craze can be directly attributed to the well-paid jobs with great prospects for advancement.

Today, India has more than 5,500 management colleges across the country. The boiling question is, are these management schools up to the challenge of providing able and skilled candidates as recruits for companies that need them?

The answer is definitely a NO.

According to a recent survey by ASSOCHAM, of the tens of thousands of students who graduate with a management degree each year, only 7% of the them turn out to be employable.

Yes, you read it right, management education is India is definitely losing its sheen.

Campus recruitments for management students has gone down by a whopping 45%, owing to the economic slowdown from 2014 to 2016. According to reports about 220 B-schools have been shut down in cities including Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, etc. More and more B-Schools across the country are likely to meet a similar fate this year.

Lack of quality education

One of the main reasons for such a dismal state of management education is poor quality of education in India. High school education quality deteriorating as is the education in undergraduate level.

The crisis in management education in India, is such that, there are a large number of people with management degree but not enough of them are skilled to meet requirement of the recruiting companies.

Growth in management is quantitative but not qualitative

Globalisation has necessitated the demand for management education which led to nearly 5,000 management institutions to be established across the country. The management institutions in the country are:

The IIMs which are the Tier-I, B-schools affiliated to universities and autonomous institutions approved by the AICTE, foreign universities are also offering UG and PG degrees in India, and distance-MBA is also contributing to this list.

Management education in India has grown quantitatively but not qualitatively. Candidates from the top ranking management institutions with top ranks are able to find lucrative jobs. An average management student is unable to sail through to find a suitable job and is not ready to settle for anything less. Thus adding to the unemployed list.

The main cause for the above scenario are lack of skills. Skills in terms of profession, communication and many more are not being taught by the institutions as part of the curriculum.

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Stagnant curriculum which lacks skill based education

The curriculum for management education in India focuses largely on academics without practical knowledge; leading to ill-prepared, virtually unemployable graduates for the global business stage.

Another important challenge with curriculum is, it hasn't been updated according to the global competitive market. Institutions continue to teach the same syllabus which were taught earlier. Universities always need to update their curriculum to produce candidates who can accept the global challenge.

All the higher education fields in India including management lacks in skill based education. Management education is mostly using case studies which do not impart skills that are practical and dynamic. Lack of practical expertise is creating an immense ridge between the real and academic culture of business management.

Also read: Tips: Skills Students Should Learn Beyond Classroom

Bottleneck for good-quality management education is the low number of faculty members

Not many bright students are encouraged to take up teaching. Teaching profession is not financially attractive as is it the industry.

In India, mostly fresh graduates attend management institutions, they are not aware of requirement in a job environment. And people in the workforce do not have time to go to school. With this scenario, lack of experienced candidates as teachers in B-schools creates a gap in between the real world requirements and the theoretical world.

Lack of good quality B-schools

The B-schools that offer good overall education and development is limited to the Top 10 schools in the country, most of them being IIMs. Out the lakhs of candidates who qualify CAT, most of the top rankers seek admissions these top schools which have limited seats to offer. The other candidates with more than 80% score have nowhere to go other than the Tier-2 and Tier-3 B-schools.

The education in these smaller B-schools are not up to the mark. They do not follow globally benchmarked practices which includes skill development, which directly hurts the quality of management education.

How to overcome the challenges faced by B-schools?

We have a few lucrative suggestions that might help all the Tier-2 and Tier-3 management schools to impart quality education.

• Focusing on quality education not quantity.
• Re-engineering the curriculum of management education.
• Encourage students to take up teaching profession by providing decent salary package and ambience.
• Training the present faculty members to update their skills and ability.
• Students have to be put through interactive, and practical sessions than mere preaching of text book case studies.
• Exposing students to industry so they can understand the problems of the industry realm.
• Provide professional training to students which focus on the current scenarios which will groom the students take on challenges faced in the real business world.
• Take action on unauthorized and illegally raised B-schools.
• Schools should focus on the teacher student ratio which sparks individual attention.