Revamping Management Education in India - Dr. D. Mukhopadhyay

The primary objective of management education is to produce managers who would remain responsible for converting input into output and managing the productive resources in order to accomplish the fundamental goal of an economic entity. By and large, the fundamental goal of an organization is to generate sufficient revenue for contributing towards matching the scarifies of the factors of production and leaving thereby residual for the shareholders particularly. Formal management education in India came into existence in late 1970s except the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM) was set up in Calcutta in 1953 affiliated with the University of Calcutta. There were few institutes during early days of post independence era who used to give Certificates/Diplomas in Management. Chartered Accountancy (CA), Cost & Management Accountancy(CMA), Engineering and Commerce courses offered by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the Institute of Cost Accountants of India(ICAI), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Universities respectively besides the management programmes offered mainly by IIM-C, IIM-A and IIM-B were the principal producers of managers for managing the economic resources of an industrial and economic organization before formal MBAs joined the league after independence. It has been observed that management graduates produced by the Indian Universities and Private Institutes barring few are not up to the mark for instant delivery of results and it is primarily because the management students are hardly given any exposure to practical field of operation and decision making process by management teachers and majority of management teachers are devoid of any practical corporate and industrial experience since they directly joined the Universities/Institutes immediately after obtaining the Degrees/Diplomas. An MBA from a traditional University is hardly different from a Postgraduate Degree holder in General Stream. Management is an applied discipline and its relevance is rooted in the application of theory into practice. Here is the necessity to transform the prevailing system of management education delivery system and curricula. Many institutes even do not revise the syllabi keeping in view the contemporary requirements of corporate world. It is the need of the hour to ponder over the issue with due seriousness. It may be recommended that to be a management teacher is a must to have three to five years of corporate/industry experience besides other qualifications and criteria and two to three years’ work experience for a candidate who want to get admission in any management programme offered by a University or an Institute and it should be made a mandatory criterion to be met with for getting admission in any of the management institutes whether under a University or AICTE controlled. Currently, The Institutes/Universities offered management programmes are practically devoid of having necessary infrastructure for delivery of management education.

Management Department of many institutes/ Universities do not have conducive ambience and environment for delivery system and as a result thousands of unemployable graduates are being churned out every year. Under the circumstances, Government of India should come forward and take appropriate initiatives for appointing a high powered expert committee for study and transformation of current management education delivery system and recommend for developing a roadmap for result oriented curricula without any delay in order to fructify the objectives of management education. Otherwise, India shall remain lagged behind even many other developing countries in the globe. Management Institutes should produce managers who shall essentially be leaders of tomorrow and in turn they would emerge as contemporary management educators. Moreover, no discipline can achieve academic excellence unless it is committed to the cause of research, developing ability to create knowledge and applying theoretical knowledge to practice and all of these attributes are essential ingredients of a Profession.

To call a spade a spade, MBAs should pass the litmus test of product differentiation and distinctiveness. Its foundation should be based on time honoured pedagogy, practice oriented syllabi and intensive training in order to meet the purposive requirements. Economic progress and social development is not possible unless India does have a robust education delivery system in general and particularly in management discipline. Skill and competence are the twin instruments that make a Professional achieve success. They are the prerequisites for solving a problem and a professional manager is to offer instant solutions to the triggers faced by an industrial undertaking. It is now high time to work out the gulf between expectation of the society and actual deliverable status and the gulf so identified needs to bridged. Harvard and Stanford are the institutions of academic excellence in the field of management besides other disciplines because of their focus and commitment for capability development among the MBA aspirants. Government has a moral responsibility for developing a time honoured methodology keeping in view the needs of the users. There are more than 2,000 management institutes in the country and majority of them just confer either a Postgraduate Degree or a Postgraduate Diploma in management hardly adding any value to the credit of a students. There is a huge gap between quality and quantity and this gap needs to be bridged as fast as possible. The management institutions should keep in view that they are meant for creating values and opportunities. In simplicity , management education is a part and parcel of the category of higher education. Faculty members should be encouraged to devote themselves in research because research is the process for knowledge creation. But most of Institutes keep the faculty members engaged in typical organizational clerical and office management works and the teachers remain bogged down in day to day office administration. They do not get sufficient time for preparation for the class lectures even. Research is last prioritized items almost everywhere. They should prepare the project proposals and submit to the funding agencies like UGC, MHRD, AICTE, ICSSR, DST, etc. There is hardly any incentive for opting and carrying out research under the prevailing system. Thus the coin is two sided and both the sides need to be seen. The compensation package offered by typical management institutes is comparatively much lower than the prescribed one. The promoters avail the loopholes of the law and opportunity of countrywide unemployment. There are typical institutes who review periodically work load of the faculty members in term of how many subjects a teacher teaches besides discharging clerical and office management works. Creativity is not possible under restrictive environments but teachers should be given academic freedom and ideas are visualized when a teacher is free from administrative office work and administrative restrictions. ”Mind without fear…” is the fundamental necessity for being a true teacher. There are many institutes where a faculty member teaches more than twenty five hours a week and then obviously quality education cannot be imparted with under such environment. The Oxford University maintains her glory as she aims to lead the academic world in delivering world class education and research. The Universities are expected to be a temple for innovation and creation of ideas but this scenario is absent mostly in all the Universities.

The USA, UK, Germany, Sweden, Japan and China are in the forefront of the march of academic excellence. It may not be irrelevant to mention that in 2011, no Indian University including IIMs and IITs could be placed in the list of top two hundred Universities across the globe but China could make it to the top fifty. Therefore, it can ultimately be asserted that Indian Universities have shown a dismal academic performance and the reasons are not far sighted perhaps. They suffer from lack of availability of fund, large student teacher ratio, motivation and incentives for research and innovations, quality of teaching, no interest in being competitive both nationally as well as internationally. Therefore, the environment in general is not conducive for taking lead or march forward in the race of academic excellence and management education is one of the victims which has been suffering from the practice of negligence and ignorance. More and more professionals should be allowed to be management teachers. Recently, UGC has prescribed that Chartered Accountants (ACAs/ FCAs), Cost & Management Accountants (ACMAs /FCMAs) and Company Secretaries (ACSs/FCSs) with first class in Bachelor Degree are eligible to apply for the post of Assistant Professor /Associate Professor /Professor in the Discipline of Management and this is a welcome step.

But, these Professionals have been made at par with that of others and there is no specific incentive for these Professionals for joining academics and opting career in academics and thus there is hardly any remarkable and encouraging response from these Professionals for taking academics as a career options barring few cases. Therefore, it is right time to initiate adopting the necessary steps for revamping the prevailing management education delivery system in the country . The Government should formulate policy documents with regard to payment of specified amount for publication in reputed national and international journals, meeting the necessary expenditure towards Travelling Allowances and Dearness Allowances , Hotel and Registration Charges for attending National and International Conferences, offering additional increments, giving weightage for promotion, creating research labs, reimbursement of the payment of Membership Fees of the Professional Bodies both National and International arena and giving periodic grant for undertaking research projects are some of the some incentive schemes should be developed for attracting the Professionals and talents for continuing with management teachership in particular and the academia in general.

(The Author is Professor of Management at School of Business, Faculty of Management, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra, Jammu & Kashmir)

Source: http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/revamping-management-education-india