Harishith Gowda (not his real name) is a student of a middle-rung business school in Bengaluru. Harshith cannot speak or write a word of English but has joined this business school, affiliated to Bangalore University. Anant Chavan (not his real name) is a student of a popular business school in Pune and his knowledge of languages is limited to Marathi and Hindi. How are these boys going to make the grade as post-graduate students in management, unless they stretch themselves?
Business schools, whose only aim is to impart a degree and help students get absorbed in one of the banks or call centres, have managed to cause untold harm to the quality of management education in India. The latent intent is to make as much money as possible. No wonder, mainstream media have labelled educationists as ‘edupreneurs’—those with the sole motive of raking in huge profits by offering educational services of any kind.
As business schools with poor infrastructure continue to get accredited by statutory bodies, the quality of management education has reached abysmal levels. However, in stark contrast, these ‘stalwarts’ in education hold forth in media interviews on education. Most ‘promoters’ wax eloquent about the state-of-the-art facilities on their campuses and claim that their coaching is avant-garde, to make their students employable. Of course, they do this only to gain marketing mileage to attract more footfalls to their campuses. Some institutions treat their students as ‘consumers’ and this has posed the greatest risk in terms of kow-towing to all their unreasonable demands. One of the demands is getting a degree irrespective of the performance in examinations!
The funny part is that all of them want accreditation from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) but are unwilling to open their purse-strings. It is appalling that promoters don’t feel the need to upgrade their infrastructure even though their fee collection runs into crores of rupees. Some of the educational institutions successfully compete with railway stations, when it comes to maintaining their toilets. Whether it is washroom facilities for lecturers or students, the situation is pretty much the same. Prior to audits, toilets are white-washed, to impress the visiting audit team. After the audit is over and certification is awarded, it does not take long for things to go back to square one.
With faculty rooms in most business schools resembling a bull pen, nothing concrete happens in these rooms except gossip and chit-chat during non-teaching hours. No student feedback is ever taken on infrastructural aspects of an educational institution. This is very much part of the accreditation requirement but the issue is conveniently pushed under the rug and a utopian or ‘make believe’ world is created, supported by marketing jargon to win laurels from statutory authorities (besides, of course, ‘taking care of them’).
The quality of outgoing students is the litmus test of a business school’s competence; this is what ensures quality placements. Most business schools proclaim 100% placement but if you investigate/ probe further, you will realise that almost 80% placements are for call-centre jobs or for sales or front-office positions in private banks where the management graduate has to help customer fill the application forms or distribute brochures.
Most good companies shun middle-rung business schools. I spoke to a relative of mine in Accenture and she admitted that the graduates from business schools are so raw that it takes enormous effort and time to train them, to make them job-ready. None of the promoters (barring a few exceptions) allows faculty members to do consultancy work during non-teaching hours. So, rather than spend their time productively, most lecturers end up watching movies on YouTube when they have nothing else to do.
As there is little motivation to take up new subjects in the next semester, they are content with what they have prepared even if it was some six years ago. With ‘performance management’ still an alien concept in business schools, you really cannot blame the lecturers. Even the conscientious ones who do a good job can get demoralised over a period of time when they realise that dynamism is not appreciated and the difference in the reward between a sincere teacher and a not-so-sincere teacher is barely Rs300 per month.
As the interaction with industry is limited (read: non-existent), lecturers are light years away from what actually happens in the market or business world. Someone who is teaching ‘advertisement’ or ‘rural marketing’ will invariably be someone who primarily has only a bookish knowledge and no practical exposure. As I mentioned in one of my previous articles, the quality of research has been dipping so low that the less said the better.
I don’t wish to paint all lecturers with a black brush. However, in most institutions, with a surfeit of content available on the Internet, lecturers do not feel the need to visit the library. Why would they, when managements are seldom bothered about the intellectual quotient of their lecturers? There are colleges where faculty members flash the e-books on screen without taking the effort to prepare for the lectures. Some faculty members play one video after another and feel that they are doing something creditable.
Today’s students have become cocky because they feel that they are paying customers whom the business school has to keep happy. Lecturers have lost their jobs when influential students with political contacts question the low marks that they have secured or wish to manipulate their attendance record. Some have filed court cases as their defence. There are students who have fabricated project reports or simply copied them from the Internet and, when questioned, have brought in rowdies or lumpen elements to threaten the dean or director of the institution. If this is the approach student-consumers have towards their education, how can one expect them to meet the needs of industry?
I fail to understand why institutions eschew the right kind of student feedback? The problem is not with the feedback mechanism per se but the way it is administered. Rather than asking for feedback on academic matters, it is about behavioural issues of faculty members. Students, who are lazy in the classroom, feel that it is time to get even with their teachers when it is time for feedback.
My observations may be perceived as somewhat snarky but, as an academician with so many years of experience, I am disgusted with the blatant commercialisation of the education sector. While marketing is required to create awareness among consumers about your product, making false claims and short-changing gullible parents or students is certainly not the way institutions grow in the long term.
Apart from the false claims of the educational institutions, what is also alarming is that their complete apathy when it comes to building bridges with industry. Business schools are expected to supply value-added minds to industry. This is not happening today; a lot of things will need serious attention to sustain in the long run and organise meaningful discussions with the corporate world. Wearing blinkers or keeping an eye only on the revenues is not the hallmark of an edupreneur. In most institutions, the positions of dean or director have little authority to bring in change and they are expected to ensure that the day-to-day administration is smooth. Given a choice, some promoters may want to do away with such positions but they have no choice because this is a statutory requirement. Often, directors in business schools are not on permanent rolls and are appointed on a contractual basis.
Bridging the gap between academia and industry—which alone can enhance the value of business schools and its students—will continue to be ‘mission impossible’, unless a slew of measures is taken to reform the operational efficiency of business schools, in particular, and the education sector, in general. All the statutory certifications hold no meaning, unless they can engender at least some improvement in the education sector.
A friend who is an activist, working for empowerment of marginalized communities, admitted this ruefully, saying that it is foolish to insist on teaching in vernacular languages alone if the intent is to join the mainstream.
Way back in 2000 I was looking for a car driver in Pune. I found one who had a bachelor's degree in commerce. He was OK as a driver but he was so resentful of his lower status as a driver that I had to let him go. He took the driver's job because he could not get one in his field as he was proficient only in Marathi. Yet he resented his status as a driver so much that I could not deal with the daily snide comments, refusal to do what other drivers did, etc.
It is a pity that the Maharashtrian pols whipped up Marathi as education medium while quietly sending their kids to English medium schools.
What is to be done with kids who have a paper degree but are unemployable?