Daily Archives: September 26, 2008
On MBAs
Dr. Madhukar Shukla links to two stories from Outlook magazine at his blog Alternative Perspective
It came as a much-needed shock to the system. Two months ago, IIT Madras director M.S. Ananth raised an issue that everyone in the academic fraternity agrees with, but no one quite wants to speak about openly. Questioning the relevance of the IIT entrance examination, he said the
present system fails to attract the best talent, those with raw intelligence.
This, he stressed, was because a large number of students took the help of
coaching institutes to crack the exams and did not possess the genuine skills required for the IITs.
The same is true for MBA entrance exams too:
Says management guru Mrityunjaya B. Athreya, “The
B-schools have gone too far towards the objective-type examinations and there is a general decline in language and communications skills. These are important for management. There is also not enough stress on the general skills and knowledge required in this kind of work.” He goes on to add that while business is gradually stepping up its exposure to corporate social
responsibility (CSR), that spirit is not visible in management entrance
examinations. “It is not enough to produce technicians and engineers.
We need holistic people,” says Athreya.”…
“…It was a surprising, and telling, exclusion from the list of compulsory courses at IIM-A. From this year, ‘Indian Social and Political Environment’ is no longer an option for first-year MBA students at the country’s leading B-school. The course, which has been around for many years, encouraged MBA students to learn something beyond boardroom skills by allowing them to regularly interact with disadvantaged sections of society and visit sites of development projects, among other things. This year’s batch at IIM-A will no longer have that privilege… There were some who felt this could be just another example of how alienated business schools are from the country’s social realities. And how, with a single-minded focus on training executives to be in sync with the corporate mantra of maximising growth and profits, B-school graduates are becoming immune to larger social responsibilities.
….Managing land acquisitions and the environment, for example, are seen by most students as more annoyance and expense than responsibility. That’s a pity, because businesses have to willy-nilly deal with such issues that have widespread social ramifications. Looking at the intense opposition from local stakeholders to the numerous SEZs being planned, or the environmental opposition to large projects, one would have thought B-schools would sensitise future managers to these prickly matters.
…”Most students who come to business schools do so with a one-point
goal of getting a good salary. They seem to be increasingly less informed about the problems our country faces and less concerned about the larger humane role that businesses can play,” adds Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, professor at IIM Calcutta’s Centre for Development and Environmental Policy. “It seems educational institutions are creating intellectual marginals at the core of our metropolises,” he observes.
The B-schools, unfortunately, couldn’t care less. Most MBA graduates are lapped up with high salary packages by firms hungry for fresh talent. In that sense, there’s no market-driven push to incorporate courses of greater social relevance. And this perpetuates business that is isolated from the rest of society”….
