Sunday Posts

Business Schools are a great success story in Higher Education. What may have started as a Correspondence training was transformed by the establishment of University department in Pennsylvania with Joseph Wharton's money, to train the captains of American industry, in 1881. A generation later, with the founding of Harvard Business School in 1908, the whole global phenomenon has got started, though it took until 1954 for Cambridge University to start Management studies (which became a separate business school in 1995, while Oxford started its Business School in 1996). By the turn of the millennium, Business has become the most popular undergraduate subject, and increasingly Engineers and other technically trained professionals were coming to Business Schools to get credentialed. By this time, Business Schools became the most successful sector in Higher Education, with unparallelled prestige, and had developed an entire ecosystem of ranking, funding and accreditation of their own...

Those who can't, teach - says The Economist (See the story ). The business schools indeed don't like the disruptive innovation business. Despite the impressive sway they hold particularly in the emerging countries, they are eager to hold on to the fragile foundational logic that MBA is necessary to lead a business, despite mounting evidence on the contrary. So, anything, like the company-run Mini-MBAs, that undermine the value of the business school business, is shunned. This is, however, head in the sand behaviour than anything strategic. The Economist sees the business schools suffering from two problems. One is about becoming too academic, with professors more obsessed with publication and academic prestige than teaching. This is a standard criticism of academic practice today, one that is easily countered. Teaching without research and practice is hardly the thing to do in a discipline like business. The Economist indeed concerned itself with the top-flight B-Schools,...

Management Education in India is in crisis, and that's good news. Students have lost confidence in the mushrooming MBA schools because they do not work. They have stopped enrolling. The banks have become weary of financing these institutions. Every month, a few business schools are closing because their owners come to realize there is no easy money in this. Talking to people who own and run these business schools, one gets the impression that the students are at fault. They are not interested in learning anything, just the job at the end. At the time of admission, there is hardly any discussion about the curriculum, methods of education or even the faculty. The students want to know what is the kind of starting salary they can get after completion. This is indeed true, and this is indeed why there are mushrooming business schools. In fact, it is easy to satisfy students' demand for good jobs in the end, without a good education, as some business schools in India de...

I am still in regular conversation with entrepreneurs in India who are setting up various business schools in different parts of the country. As I observe, I know that this is currently the rage - the business to be in - and everyone is betting that the recession will drive a clutch of students to Business School, as they won't be able to find easy employment after finishing college. The reading is possibly valid, to some extent. I just talked about my own plans to go to a business school because recession has presented me the best opportunity to take a break. However, one wonders whether there is too much of activity in the Business School space in India, whether the business plans for these schools are essentially faulty and whether this will all implode in a couple of years time. I essentially have three issues with this frenetic activity in the business school space. First, I do think it is too opportunistic. People don't seem to learn, and this is another example of every...

I am trying to do something brave - planning to go to university for a year. Yes, that's right - I may stop working for a year and live without income, and study. This is indeed counter-intuitive at my age. However, I think the recession has presented me with an excellent incentive to take a break. Truth be told, I always wanted to do this. I always thought I need a restart in my career. A sort of change of direction from what I have been doing. In my career, one thing followed the other and I moved by default or following opportunities. However, I never had a chance to set my agenda or get something I like. I am hoping that by being brave and following my heart, I shall set that right now. So, the plan is more or less final now. I exit employment at the end of August and join one of the business schools [there was an alternate thought, but now I zeroed on studying business] for a year. I can not possibly afford to live in London. Also, I would love to stay in one of the smaller un...

My visit to India this time around was dominated by discussions about setting up or collaborating in B-School projects. I mentioned in an earlier post, there are thousands of B-Schools being set up now. Suddenly, this is the new craze. Everyone seems to be betting that this recession will make corporate India go on a sabbatical. Also that the entry level jobs will become scarce and the graduates will see the value in spending a couple of additional years at a B-School sharpening their skills. The reason I was seeing the action from close quarters is because I was part of a Northern Irish trade mission which had a few representatives from Northern Irish universities. Everyone seemed to want to collaborate with them. So, the idea was - they set up a B-School, which is nothing more than a Private Institution, and then they give a Northern Irish degree through partnership with these universities. I thought this is an incredibly naive idea, and proved to be right - one university representa...

Yesterday evening, I spent time talking to someone who is planning to set up a business school in Hyderabad. It was a very interesting discussion - not just because this is a very successful professional pursuing his ideas of how business education should be imparted. He was also clear why there is space for another management school - because the demand is immense and the seats in good educational institutions remain limited. Besides, he also had a lot to say about what is wrong in the business education industry as of today, and how he wants to address the problems. To be honest, while I found his opinions interesting, his policy prescriptions, at least within the short span of discussion we had, were limited to introduction of blended learning. So, he was one of those who thought introducing an amount of technology will actually solve most of the problems the B-Schools in India face today. In my opinion, that is a rather simple view, and more must be done to enable a skills leap in ...