The Hindu Business Line : Lost in the woods...

Managing is a skill and a craft, learned continuously through practice, like archery, carpentry or writing, while management, treated as a subject, is unfortunately likened to a body of settled notions and theories as in economics, physics or biology. And thereby hangs a tale.

Knowledge, contrary to popular belief, is neither a prerequisite nor does it guarantee one's acquiring the skill. The difficulties and shortcomings of the so-called management education in this country arise from this unfortunate choice of models. It has also been entangled in the mad rush for some form of financial security through the job-market, which is a hallmark of the Indian climbing and aspiring classes. To ambitious parents, not to put too fine a point on it, an MBA is really an APM, automatic placement machine! It is very doubtful if the craze for the qualification would survive if the practice of campus recruitment were not so widespread and growing.

The fact is, as a seniormost managers of Hindustan Lever put it, the IIM campus gives them a very select bunch of people to interview who have already been through so many competitive hoops that they save a lot of time and cost for the employer! Otherwise they would have to go to the vast number of colleges of engineering, commerce, arts and sciences around the country and devise their own special means of filtering the numbers down.

The better-known MBAs contain the progeny of the officer class of India, essentially middle class, risk-averse and looking for a pension after 35 years. Look through the applications of a few hundred candidates (as I have done) and you will find that their families are a perfect stereotype of metropolitan India. A huge majority is made up of the civil services, the Judiciary, medicine and law, railways, senior armed force officers, and managers of banks and the larger corporate sector companies.

It is no coincidence that the only major state in India where the MBA has almost no status, as a desirable "bridegroom qualification", is Gujarat. It also happens to be the one region known for high regard for self-employment and exceptional entrepreneurship.

Based on over three decades of experience it seems as though the MBA degree has completely lost its way. The original purpose and direction was to create a cadre of managers for all sectors especially industry, and a base of Indian experience through research. Indeed, in the earlier batches, at least at the Ahmedabad institute, there was a substantial majority with some prior work experience. This has almost disappeared now. Today, it is an extension of the engineering college campuses for two more years of incubation.

The traditional model of MBA courses adopted in India came from the American model of the late 1950s and has taken on local colouring and accent. Our beliefs regarding the due place of education are drawn in an analogy of other professions such as law and medicine and therefore the tremendous social value attached to the gathering of alphabets after one's name! Today, the way the course is structured and taught, it is no more than a PG addendum to any basic degree, with a placement prospect attached to it. When jobs become more easily available for those with either a general or specific first degree, the lustre is likely to go off the management degree. This already happened once to an extent at the height of the software boom, and might still happen again if the outsourcing of clerical and simple skilled tasks move from the West to India.

Thanks to the relatively recent origin of first-rate degrees in the subject (unlike medicine, law, or accountancy), management offered the first hope in the late `60s that a good student, regardless of the subject in his first degree, could hope to get a decent start in life and an assured middle-class living. Up till then one could hope to achieve such a result only after a good first class honours followed by a high enough rank in the civil services examination.

To such a person in the late `60s, the MBA at one of the IIMs, was a godsend. Gradually however, the notion grew in popularity that the newly minted qualification was essential for a management acolyte to begin at the bottom rung. As the numbers demanded by the expansive phase of the economy were very large, there was a sudden mushrooming of so called MBA schools, many attached to Universities and some stand-alone. To the latter, it was also an attractive business proposition, since fees for this high status course tended to be in a class apart from the usual arts and science courses.

Today various estimates put the number of such institutes or teaching shops (and some plain fraudulent operations) as nearing 1,000. The ones at the top 20 to 30 bear no resemblance whatever to the other segments, namely the vast majority. The authority originally set up to regulate engineering schools, now oversees this. To some it would appear like bolting the door after the horses have fled by not granting any more approvals unless the degree already affiliated to a University, which of course would seem a case of adding belts and braces!

Many serious minded educationists admit, in private conversations, that some 90% of those who have been given the approval over the past decade do not deserve it. Those "shops in NOIDA" as they are referred to in New Delhi parlance, currently occupy on paper the same status, to all external appearances, as the better known institutions - a very sad commentary on both our academic and regulatory practices. The losers are the children of lesser schools and universities, who take up this degree full of hope but are woefully under-prepared for a career.

The main reason for the variable quality, apart from the intent of the entrepreneurial owners of such schools, is the extreme scarcity of qualified and competent teachers of managerial subjects. The best of management teaching comes from practical experience, rubbing shoulders with managers, backed by an ability to synthesise the experience and present it effectively. Few people capable of this task are tempted by the prospect of being a professor.

On the other hand, the products of the prestigious IIMs and similar schools are becoming, as one report put it, "islands of privilege in a society that tends to put them on a pedestal. Not that it is in itself wrong to be distinguished, or to be an achiever, but the measure seems to have become predominantly one of money, which I think they will realise, (and one hopes before it is too late) is a bit lopsided, and in the end a waste of the richest human resources of the country, if not the world".

The problems with management education have as much to do with the process as with the content. Over twenty years of tutoring students and managers has persuaded me of the need to emphasise the doing element and of learning by trying it out and seeing what happens. Given the nature of the task of managing organisations, this approach has its serious limitations, unlike in surgery. There are no readily available specimens to dissect on the table. The most one can do is a simulation of the real world, including cases, games, computer models, role-play exercises, group work and so on. To teach this way one needs an almost impossibly rare amalgam of experience... ability to conceptualise, articulate, generate some curiosity about the subject and willingness to live the life of an academic. Only the surgeon-professors at a teaching hospital come anywhere near satisfying this prescription.

So there are two problems: one of the purpose and design of the course itself (given that we cannot change society's perception that the MBA is a pre experience degree) and the second the teaching method.

I propose two solutions.

The first is to add a year of business studies at the end of any other course, be it engineering or commerce, in the regular colleges and teach all the so-called subject matter of management, the various theories and descriptive or analytical explanations of how markets and companies work and so on. Thereafter the student can do a full year of apprenticeship in a company (on a small stipend) and then apply for a position.

The MBA schools on the other hand can concentrate on teaching the manager to integrate and make sense of his experience, learn the right language, update his knowledge base to the extent required and learn to apply learning from several industries by interacting with other managers. Such a course would be open to any one over, say, 28 or so, with at least five years experience and no upper limit. It can be delivered in a variety of ways, over distance, in the evenings, over weekends, by sandwich type workshops followed by assignments, and so on, depending on the need.

The tutoring can then be handled by not only the full time academics but also those practitioners who are interested in teaching and are capable of doing it well, without having to give up their careers to do it. This way the material will remain current, relevant and constantly refurbished and made to come alive both within the classroom and outside of it.

Yes, this would mean shutting down some of the poor quality "teaching shops" that were launched mainly make a profit from capitation fees, with little or no investment. Since they were started by entrepreneurs who saw it as the "next thing" in a commercial sense, no doubt they will accept the reason in the market forces bringing about a shake-out exactly as in several other "industries" such as leasing, NBFCs and dotcoms.

The author is Director, IFMR, Chennai.

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