Sunday Posts

Among various projects that I am considering doing is one that involves creating a global programme for Entrepreneurs.  As always, things that I do represent a coalition of interests. The current conversation involves someone I have known for a long time, and respect for his business savvy, backed by investors wanting to leverage UK qualifications in the global markets, and primarily in China. My role will be to craft a programme that works, and I am setting myself to the task as earnestly as I can. However, I have always harboured doubts about degrees that look to certify entrepreneurship. For one, I think it is a purely defensive move: I can not think of a person who would be a successful entrepreneur in the end trying to an MBA in entrepreneurship first. Besides, while I do not deny that there are things entrepreneurs need to learn, I would always see entrepreneurs as men (and women) of action, who needs to learn not from text books and lecturers but from the action it...

I am forced to think what quality means for an education programme through my day-to-day activities to develop and establish a high 'quality' MBA programme. The interactions with the Academic team tells me that better quality means greater resource allocation, more people, more computers, more books for the library etc. This may be correct up to a point and reflect the realities of the programme management, where one battle you want to win is the battle for the budgets. However, I am not convinced that once the resources are sorted out, 'quality' will happen itself. On the contrary, I have started believing that quality of a programme may not be linked to resources at all, once an adequate level of resources have been allocated. The example I shall use here is that there is an optimal class size. Let's say we throw more resources and reduce our class sizes from 30 to 20: I am unlikely to believe that this will mean better quality of the programme. Same goes for unde...

Nathan Furr makes a case for the E-School approach on his Forbes blog ( read here ) and against the traditional B-School approach. The key difference, following his argument, is seeing problems as opportunity and uncertainty as a given. While B-Schools keep talking about change, they have changed little (except becoming far too expensive) and collectively, the B-School world does not want the world to change. However, it is changing. We all know about technology. While the technological changes are being co-opted in B-School curriculum, it is not easy to cope with its social effect: The age of transparency. In the age of Wikileaks , it is important to be transparent: Instead, the B-Schools are trying hard to tell people that they must look authentic. The statement is self-defeating, indeed. However, that shows the key problem with B-Schools: They are too disconnected from life. The idea of E-School, hence, is important, and I would tend to agree that all Business Education must go tha...

I am doing some work on what quality means in the context of our MBA programme, and the discussion is gradually pulling me to an uncharted territory. My initial ideas were, if I can claim, simple: I thought it meant keeping promises, delivering what was said in the prospectus. This was the textbook definition of quality as I understood it. However, it took me only a few conversations with students and tutors to see how differently each of these promises were understood, and how culturally specific some of the things I assumed we have said were. Besides, the enquiry opened up a whole new discussion about the content of the MBA programme, its objectives and what it must achieve in the end to be valuable. My starting point was the Benchmark statements for a Business and Management Masters as provided by the Quality Assurance Agency of UK. ( Can be accessed here ) My understanding was that the MBA should be built around General Management, and ideally avoid narrow subject specialisms. The ...

One part of my work is exciting: Developing a new Global MBA programme. The college I am working for have been offering an MBA for a while, a general one validated by an UK university. It is a quite well structured programme, highly successful among international students. However, over last six months, I taught in the programme and was involved in managing it along with my colleagues, and this experience has given me some insights which I want to utilize now. So, I am currently working on a change agenda, with the objective that we would want to develop a truly differentiated, global programme, in step with the post-recession world. I have set myself a period of six more months, by when we should implement a new programme design and ensure greater manageability of how the programme is delivered. While I go along this route, however, I wanted to keep a narrative of the journey, so that I can look back at this process and reflect upon. Hence, this post. At this time, my plans are quite ...

I read with interest a press interview given by R S Pawar , the Chairman of NIIT , on the subject of NIIT University's launch of a MBA programme. Being an NIIT student first and then an employee for several years, I regard Mr Pawar as a thought leader and a pioneer in Private Education business in India. Despite many criticisms that NIIT faced for its uncontrolled growth and resultant inability to control the quality of services, Mr Pawar and his colleagues had a vision which transformed India in a way. I know the persistent criticism is that they just took the opportunity presented to them, but this comes from people who have not seen the hard work, the management sophistication, the long term strategic thinking, commitment to professional business practises that built NIIT . I have, first hand, and therefore, I hold NIIT in very high esteem. Therefore, what Mr Pawar says about the MBA programme is worth listening to. This is of course just a Press Release, orchestrated, n...