A recent announcement by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) indicated that close to 29 business schools had applied for closure in Mumbai. In business schools located in Navi Mumbai and Vashi area, the number of students had dwindled to such an extent that faculty members had to be shared between colleges. Business schools – be it in Pune or Mumbai or Bengaluru -- got way too greedy focusing on monetary value alone. These schools began running their operations like business establishments focusing only on revenues. Quality of incoming raw-material (students) was sacrificed at the altar of building a future fortune for these entrepreneurs and their families. So the downfall was imminent.
Take the case of Bengaluru. A number of colleges in Bengaluru have greased the palms of officials to establish Universities. Their vision and mission statements may be grand but the real reason for setting up Universities is to attract greater revenues and create wealth for their families in the long run. The same applies to Pune as well.
I have many relatives in Chennai and Bengaluru and when I chat with them on skype so many murky truths get revealed. But I am not surprised. I have known all these things all along my career as a recruiter and an academician. So when relatives used to tell me “Chandra, you are so lucky to have had a teaching job. It is so cool”, I can only smirk at them. The truth is known to only those who are in the teaching field. As digital distractions abound, today’s generation of students are – by and large – reckless with ‘I-don’t-care’ attitude and are also hypersensitive. They refuse to accept their mistakes and become defensive when disciplinary measures are invoked.
Since this is a topic that I have been itching to write for a long time, I am planning to write it in three parts and hope that a responsible magazine like Moneylife will do justice to expose the atrocities in the education sector. I do not think that there are solutions to these problems that can be worked overnight. But the malaise has spread so deeply that it is difficult to extricate education from this marshy mess.
I am leading a retired life shuttling between Pune, US and Bengaluru and when I look at the plight of relatives and friends working in business schools, I am relieved that I am no longer part of the rat race and the dirty politicking that happens in these places. As a recruiter, my job is more satisfying even though I do not have much of a client base to boast of. At least I am healthy bereft of all the tensions that other lecturers face.
Let me share my concerns with respect to business schools in the following segments:
1. Quality of teaching faculty
2. Quality of students
3. Infrastructure
4. Training & Placement
5. Pedagogy
The names have been changed to protect identities.
Quality of teaching faculty
For every teacher in a business school who is passionate, sincere, committed and diligent, there are five teachers who are in the field just for making a few additional bucks. This is the truth. Academia never believes in a level playing field when it comes to rewarding the efforts of teachers who have put their heart and soul to educate their students. I am mainly referring to business schools here because that is where my forte has been.
Mr Surendra holds a Master in Business Administration (MBA) degree from an obscure university in Dharwad and he studied in Kannada medium till his graduation. He teaches marketing and communication skills at a college in Nashik. Sadly Mr Surendra cannot speak a line of English without a dozen grammatical errors and he is so shy of writing even one page on his own. But he teaches marketing and communication.
Then we have Professor ST Mani, who worked in Microsoft as a Sales Manager for many years. Mr Mani lost his job in the 2008 recession and then unable to get a job of his liking, he joined a popular management institute in Pune. Since Mr Mani has not entered teaching of his own volition, one cannot expect him to deliver a fantastic lecture in class. However, Mr Mani is the toast of his students and is very popular lecturer in the college.
I was teaching in this college way back in 2013 as an adjunct faculty and it always amazed me that students rated Professor Mani very highly. Professor Mani was always gossiping in the faculty room and I rarely noticed any academic rigour in this lecturer.
Now the Indian education sector has copied the performance feedback mechanism that exists in the US blindly and many business schools implement egregious performance feedback systems in their institutions. I think that this is true across the board in most business schools. The main objective of this feedback system is to use student feedback as a criterion for reducing annual increment that institutions owe their teachers. Most institutions have not implemented even the Fifth Pay Commission and the Government is now talking about Seventh Pay Commission. What is the use of such policy decisions when it does not impact people whom it is intended at?
The case of Professor Mani is symptomatic of the rot that has developed in the Indian education system. His spouse works in an IT company in Bengalurr and he travels on weekends in his Ford Fiesta all the way from Pune to Bangalore to be with his wife. While every lecturer worth his salt would be preparing for the classes, Professor Mani has never ever prepared for any of his marketing or IT or operations management classes. Guess why?
As one of his students put it to me over a casual chat, “Madam, Professor Mani knows to kill time in the classroom. He cracks jokes and creates a relaxing atmosphere in the class. In every class, he would play a video and organize a group discussion. Students using mobile phones in classrooms or chatting among themselves is not a problem at all. He does not believe in telling them anything. He has guaranteed full marks in our exams. So the lowest score that any student gets in his subject is 90 out of 100.”
During the next semester, my seating had to be readjusted to accommodate a new recruit. Ironically I had a seat bang next to Professor Mani. I was appalled at the way he was keeping himself occupied. A gadget-addict Professor Mani was forever on his smart phone or playing videos on his laptop loud enough to distract the neighbours. He never believed in correcting any of the answer sheets. There was only one assignment that he gave to all students and all of them copied from each other and submitted the assignment. Since he had given the same topic to all the students, there was no need to even correct the assignments and all of them got the same marks.
Even for the semester examinations, I discovered to my horror that he had not corrected a single paper and had given marks at random. In Professor Mani’s case, there was no need to follow any syllabus or any sort of obligation to complete the syllabus. In the classrooms, Mr Mani would talk about Google, Sundar Pichai, Bill Gates, Narendra Modi or about the latest smart phones even though the subject that he was teaching was – “Operations Management”.
That the students were so dumb not to realize what the professor was up to is the harsh reality. This reflects on the quality of students who are selected for joining the MBA program. As the professor was kind and courteous to them and gave them full marks, so enamoured were the students that they gave him a five star rating and one should not be surprised if he got the “Best Teacher” award later on in his career.
Professor Mani has a roaring side business as well. He has two business outlets in Cochin and the same is being managed by his brothers. He also has contacts in IBM (mostly HR managers from Kerala) who ask him for referrals. So Mani scouts the net to find out candidates and recommends them to IBM. He does all this in the office hours – this is what I realised from the countless conversations he was having on phone. No, I was not eavesdropping.
But when he was not in his seat, my work was interrupted by candidates who came to meet him in the college and not finding him they would come to me asking for his whereabouts. Being extra friendly with students has resulted in Professor Mani getting lots of leads for his recruitment business. And so lucky is he, isn’t it? How many people have the luxury of working for two organisations at the same time? So Professor Mani uses all the resources given to him by the business school to run his recruitment agency.
As I was preparing to leave for US in early 2015, Professor Mani was pressing me to take a term insurance policy. I was wondering why I would need a term insurance at this age and explained the same to him. He then informed me that he had become an insurance agent. He wanted my help so that I could refer clients to him. Additionally he had also become a property broker helping people find homes to buy or rent. As I looked at him with amazement, I was reminded of two characters of RK Narayan – “Mr Sampat” and “Raju guide”. In an email exchange that we shared last month, he excitedly informed that he had started translation work for a local politician in Pune. Phew! I was speechless.
Just imagine… A professor who does not have to prepare for any class, who does not need to fulfil any duties as an academician and ends up getting a monthly salary from the business school. He is also an insurance agent, a real estate broker, a translator and a recruiter. Yet he gets a fantastic performance rating from his students. So long as people like Mr Mani are associated with business schools, I do not see any hope for business schools in the future.
(To be continued)
(This is the first part of a three part series)
Well articulated .