How effective are Indian B-Schools ?

In the field of business education, institutional collaborations have played a significant role, especially during the last two decades. Last Sunday, I watched a show on CNBC called Lessons in Marketing Excellence. Essentially, it featured the final round of a competition for B-School students across India conducted by CNBC and Hindustan Unilever Limited. The show especially provided an ironic commentary on how the education we provide in Indian business schools and the general eco-system of Indian business are boxing us in and curtailing even a tendency to innovate.

There are many MBA colleges opened in every street in the city of India and it is very difficult for the students to differentiate between colleges which are good or best. So because of that anyone can do MBA from any college by giving a high amount of fees. The one main major issue here is the b-schools are becoming placement agencies, so the students rather than concentrating on studies, they concentrate only for placements because of this mindset sometimes they will not be good at concepts also and which will lead them nowhere in this entire worlds. The main reason why Indian b-schools fail to make it to the top league globally is their inability to attract globally renowned faculty on a full-time basis and also the lack of full autonomy covering all aspects of their operations. With a significant expansion of the international student exchange programme, most premier institutions like IIMs have a significant number of international students on their campuses practically during the entire academic year.

Many institutes are evolving these days and lot of students are attracted towards them by their placement ads and prestigious MBA tag. But still the real standard of study is maintained by some of the institutes only. Example here is, as the students of most general B-schools are seen assalesmen in their training or as agentsof various finance companies. The increased number of schools and passed out students has reduced the value of a MBA degree.

Facts :-

There are around 4500 business schools in India as of 2015. Some of them are even in the list of top 100 colleges of the world. But in the last two years, nearabout 200 business schools have been shut down and at least 120 more are on the same way.

It is important to understand how effective are such B-Schools which are making big promises of placements and high salaried job.

• Most of the B-Schools in India seem to have borrowed the concepts from western countries. Instead of educating students about the practical application of knowledge on the environment and situations of the nation they are just simply making the students mug up the western concepts. Here B Schools fail to fix the concepts of students from the roots.

B-Schools in India are acting more like marketing agencies than an institution of education. They lure students by appealing them with high salary packages, incentives and high standard of living. They assure placements in renowned companies. However the reality is very few of such B School give placements to their students with reputed recruiters.

• B Schools in India are more of profitable institutes rather than educational institutes. They only concentrate on making their own profits and put the students in a dream world of high profile life without any assurance.

• As B Schools have started expanding few years back, the staffs for such institutions are very less. It is one of the major cause why there are very less trained and intellectual business students coming out from such schools.

• Unemployment- Even if there is large number of B Schools opened everywhere in India, recruiters select very few students from such schools which is one of the major cause of unemployment. Therefore, the educated B School students are left with their degrees only without any employment.

• B Schools are about making you appear like an entrepreneur. Instead of focusing on the improving the concepts of students on different subjects, B Schools are more conscious about grooming.

• B Schools in India have made the mindset of students as job oriented rather than education oriented. Students thronged towards such institutions to get high paid job instead of making any decision according to their skills and interest.

Even after having many limitations of B School in India, the credit of introducing entrepreneurship at massive level goes to it.

How effective are Indian B-Schools ?

Challenges :-

Most of the syllabus in Indian B-schools is relevant to the developed economies of the west rather than developing economies like India.
Though some B-schools like IIMs, IITs are competing with the global standards. And all the remaining business schools are not really trying to improve their course standards.
According to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), 2016, about 93% of India’s B-school graduates are not actually employable.
Most of the business schools in India are facing the problems like lack of infrastructure, poor faculty, lack of research opportunities etc.
The Indian Business schools select their students largely on the basis of marks. As long as a student has got excellent marks, he’s in. We need managers, not scholars.
Except for roughly 2-3% B-schools, it has become business, with fees rising as high as 15 lakhs and the no. of students in a class being more than 200 in some colleges. Only some colleges have been providing proper attention to this problem.
Indian MBA programs have become the placement factories.
There is shortage of well-trained teachers at higher educational institutes. Even this is the case with the top institutes like IIT’s,IIM’s, etc.
A dire shortage of PhD’s, delays in the recruitment and lack of incentives have been an important cause of the inability of the institutes to nurture the new talent.
Problem lies not only in the higher education but from the primary education, where the low quality education results in the weak basics of the students.
Indian B-Schools are placement oriented rather than education oriented.
Admission to B-schools is not that hard because of the availability of management quota. This diluted value of B-schools.
Over professionalization of business education is curtailing innovation.

Conclusion :-

Indian Business schools are trying to catch up the international standards. There have been drastic improvements from the past few years. But still a lot needs to be done. We should adopt best practices in the world, and at the same time there is a need to Indianise the business education.

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How effective are Indian B-Schools