M. B. A. are three magic letters which many a young student dream of attaching to their names to get a supposedly grand entry into the high portals of the club of "managers". The image of senior managers and executives living a jet-set life style, with a lap-top on one lap and a secretary on the other has been firmly implanted in these young minds by our magazines and television. With the entry of multinationals on the Indian business scene, this picture of "heaven" has further improved, where managers now have paid "foreign" holidays, salary measured in dollars and cars which are the current rage on the streets of New York or Tokyo. Like an engineering degree used to be a few years ago, an M. B. A., now a days, commands a good dowry in the marriage market also. Undoubtedly, it is akin to a golden rainbow.

As is true of all such business opportunities, we have a mushroom growth of business schools who claim to hand over this rainbow on a platter to these bleary-eyed youngsters waiting in this queue to "heaven". Things have gone to the extent of offering postal courses to secure an M. B. A. I am amused!! Soon we will have postal courses on how to learning driving a car or even better, on how to swim. Offering management degrees from some obscure foreign universities "sitting right here in India' is another comic practice started to exploit the inborn Indian tendency of applauding everything foreign.

On might argue that there is nothing wrong in exploiting latent demand in the market by whatever means, as long as they are fair and offer to the "customers" what they need (isn't this anyway what business management teaches?). My purpose today is not to discuss the rights and wrongs of opening such business schools, but to lay down the criteria of how the quality of management education (outside the few premier institutes in the country offer) can be improved.

Quality of students: Many feel that the basic quality of students available to these supposedly "mofussil" (read "other-than-the-premier institutes") business schools is bad. Nothing could be farther from the truth. A good thing begets a good thing. Just look at some of our higher secondary schools or colleges which keep posting two-figure numbers in the annual "merit lists". Why is it that some of them have been branded as factories producing merit scholars? There is not short cut to success and it is hard work, and hard work alone, which has catapulted them into this league. But one thing is certain; it is because of this success that these schools attract the cream of talent in the community and once the cream comes to them, they find it easier to mould them into future "merit scholars". To reach this stage, they had to first go through the grind. A good business school will thus automatically attract good talent.

Quality of the syllabus: Word for word, the topics covered in the course contents of these local business schools are more than a match to the curriculum specified by an Indian Institute of Management. Had just this been sufficient, we would have had M. B. A. 's of the same quality passing out of these schools as well. Obviously, drafting out a good syllabus is no guarantee of the quality of graduates passing out.

Quality of the faculty: That brings us to the third and the most vital ingredient of any school and especially a business school. Who is teaching business management to the students in theses business schools which have mushroomed? Sometimes, we have professors borrowed from other faculties, mainly 'commerce'. While these erudite persons are master teachers in their own fields, they have rarely been associated with management of any kind of business in their professional or personal lives. They have, most of the time, taught from old text books, and are generally used to the normal syndrome of teaching students with an eye on how the latter will pass the question-answer format of the university examinations. Unfortunately, doing business is not the same as passing examinations. If this were so, every merit scholar would have made an excellent businessperson.

One thing which clearly differentiates a premier business school from others, is the respect that captains of the industry give to its faculty members. Most of the faculty members in a premier business school have a roaring 'consultancy' of their own where the get paid by business houses to help them improve quality of their decision making. It is normally safe to assume that something for which someone is willing to shell out money and something which is purchased repeatedly, must be worth that money being paid for. Premier institutes, in fact, encourage their faculty members to accept such assignments from business houses, because they rightly believe that it is the quality of their staff that improves with such exercises, apart from the monetary benefits that accrue to both the faculty members and the institute itself. It is also an excellent indicator to determine which of their own faculty members are more talented than others. There might be rare exceptions though, where, as it is sometimes said, "a good umpire need not necessarily be a good cricketer."

A new breed of "visiting faculty" has suddenly sprung up as a result of this mushrooming of business schools. Executives, who normally would not have ever thought of teaching, are increasing turning towards this activity for the handsome (sometimes) pocket money that is offers. But can the nitty gritties of a business school be run on the shoulders of visiting faculties? It is a classic example of responsibility without accountability. The so-called visiting faculty could not care less about the fate of the students and the owners of the business schools are more interested in pretending that the syllabus has been covered; it doesn't matter if it has been done by the visiting faculty at their convenience with long gaps to adjust to the touring schedule of the concerned executive (for example). You will reap as you sow, they say.

In conclusion, I would like to stress that it is the quality of the faculty, which necessarily determines the quality of the output from the business school--as it would in any school. If we have to improve the placement opportunities for students passing out of these schools, if we do not want to produce 'namesake' MBAs, if we want to help the industry solve its problems better, and if we want to provide good quality talent to satisfy this really large demand for managers, we must ensure independent business schools outside the purview of archaic university laws. They should be governed by autonomous bodies comprising of captains of the industry themselves, and must have a full-time, competent faculty who are encouraged to prove their mettle by commercially offering their considerable talents to the outside industry.

All this will cost money, (a lot of it in fact) but have you ever heard of good things coming cheap??

"Mr. Prakash Shesh, the author, has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad after his Masters in Physics from I.I.T. New Delhi. You may send your feedback to him by choosing an option at the top right corner of this page."