Business school on the web

Online B-schooling may be the only way to satisfy explosive demand for business education across the world. But it can do much more

Noise is not what you expect of a mouse. Not even in the information age. Clicky-click, snippety-snap, squeaky-swish "" try as you might, that's the best you get from the modern mouse, that handy little mound strung to your computer. Clicky-click, snippety-snap, squeaky-swish. Quiet little thing. Naah, not the kind of stuff you can start a rock concert with.

Then along comes the Mouse That Roars, and boy, things are never the same again.

It's the kind of tale that could send the Business Education fraternity, forever on the lookout for exciting case studies, into a frenzy.

And not just because it lets them throw the words "paradigm shift" about in joyous abandon. It's also the kind of tale that's rare.

Rare, but not hopelessly so. "When I want to watch a good movie, I make one," a filmmaker once said. Business schools, globally, are beginning to do much the same: script their own roaring mouse story. How so? They are beginning to adopt the Internet, and the access it provides to millions of people in search of an education, as a modern means to achieve the same end: delivering a business education. Things may never be the same again.

The "mouse" in this story, however, is not so much the idea of online education, squeaky quiet though it too has been, but the student. It's a story of empowerment, you see.

The Mouse That Roars If there's something about the internet that surprises occasional visitors, it is the way it gets people to get over their shyness, open up and... er, you'd rather not hear more.

Let's just say that cyberspace is where youngsters tend to reveal themselves as personalities. And this, believe it or not, is fast turning out to be the surprise Selling Proposition of online business education. Ask Mukesh Aghi. As the former president of IBM India, he has seen change from right upfront in a fast-changing industry. He has seen the era of the centralized mainframe, for example, cracking up under the force of individual desktop empowerment. That was about computers "for the rest of us" as IBM's challenger Apple called these "toys" (PCs).

Now, as the CEO of Universitas 21 Global, a Singapore-based joint venture between a webbed alliance of some 16 global universities called Universitas 21 and Thomson Learning, Aghi speaks as a challenger of the status quo himself. "There is equity in the online classroom," he says, "all students have an equally loud voice."

For that, you must thank the lack of face-to-face interactivity, what was once thought to be a drawback of online education. "It is precisely the lack of face-to-face interactivity in an online environment that allows our students to discover new aspects about themselves," observes Aghi.

They discover the will to speak up, for instance, or even spar with someone in a debate who might be too intimidating in a live class setting. Say, a peevish professor with a ghastly glower, or a stud of a student held in witty esteem by the other gender.

To many, physical absence is a relief: it lets them think slowly and formulate their words with utmost care. This acts as an equalizer, bringing into contention the voices that would otherwise stand no chance amidst glib speakers.

All said, it makes for more thoughtful, if unspontaneous, discussions. It also gives many more people access to business education.

Quality and e-quality

Online business education deserves your attention, above all, for its potential to shake your very notion of business education. Or at least its exclusivity. As globalisation gains pace, the throngs in demand of business education are beginning to look frightening.

By one estimate, some 100 million students worldwide are looking for a business degree, half of them in the Asia Pacific region alone. They want an MBA because it's their great big hope for a better life.

Right now, the supply of business education is woefully short. The business education base has been overwhelmed by all the crowds, and arch-n-portal B-schools in the offweb world are aware that something must be done, and done fast.

Universitas 21 Global has made a modest start, with under 1,000 students from 45 countries, but its target is staggering: 40,000 students by 2015.

Sir Colin Campbell, president and vice-chancellor, University of Nottingham, which is part of Universitas 21, speaks of online education as a global academic imperative. "There's no way that Asia and the West will ever build enough physical universities and institutions of education to meet the demand," he says.

There's neither the time nor the money for that. The solution, then, is all too clear to ignore: go online, and throw open admission to the multitudes. "There are tens of millions of people," notes Sir Campbell, with no loss of composure, "and online is the way to enfranchise them."

Okay, vast numbers of wannabe MBAs are probably never going to make any productive use of the education even if they get it. But that's not the point. Do these wannabes deserve MBAs? Who knows "" it's for the market to work that out. And the market works in mysterious ways.

Going by past data, a prestigious B-school education is not the most reliable predictor of success (George Dubya Bush, by the way, is history's first MBA with the World's Most Powerful Job).

As the saying goes, the best education can do is hope that nobody suffers for lack of it.

The critical thing, to Sir Campbell's mind, is to grant access to the numbers that modern network technology enables. "Take a look at our students," he says, "they are young, affuent and mobile. But what about the not-so-young, not-so-affluent and not-so-mobile? They've got children, household budgets, no time off from work. They go online."

Now that would be something. Students doing a "swot" on companies while wiping snot off babies. Think about it. And all for the common good too. Lack of pre-B-school life diversity has always been one of the biggest failures of business education, particularly so in India.

Admit it: excessively homogenous classrooms are not only dreary, they're intellectually limiting rather than stimulating. Who wants more of the same? Not online educators, by the sound of it.

So is this online stuff a revolution in the making? Is this set to shatter the old framework? Is this business education for the rest of us?

Blended Learning, Sir

Revolution? Sir Campbell prefers the word "transformation", and that's not because he likes euphemisms. Rather, he gives the impression of a tartan-clad iconoclast of the Scottish highlands: an attitude of youthful maturity that values the worthwhile aspects of tradition (a la Smith) while subjecting it to the severest test of reason (a la Hume). And so it is that he dismisses any threat to the current system of education. "It's not stark mutual alternatives," he says.

Good universities already have programs that use both face-to-face and online interaction with teachers, and that's the future. "It'll be blended learning," predicts Sir Campbell.

It's a nice term, blended learning. And nobody believes for a moment that the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are about to crash by the wayside as business education pops up on computer screens in remote corners of the country. The prestige of IIMs will stay unchallenged for years, long enough for them to perfect their own blends.

They had better hurry, though, if they want some of the aggregative action. While the power of educational exclusivity, like sophisticated art, is likely to endure, the blended approach might just possibly follow the logic of numbers.

A large customer base allows that much more space for feedback-loop learning, need sensitivity and rapid adaptation. It's a version of the "network effects" that analysts talk about.

Networks are valuable essentially for the cross-interactivity they enable, and so their value rises exponentially as more and more people log on.

The tough nut in expansion, of course, is how not to lose quality. Ah, now that's where educational brands come in. Brands? Well, why not.

Educators, the world's original institution builders in a sense, are arguably more conscious than marketers of what it takes to generate intellectual value and sustain it over centuries. Ever seen good universities make promo-offers? They use the far more dependable strategy of values-signalling instead.

But all this talk of instruction-method blends still doesn't address what could, eventually, be the most refreshing part. And that's the genuine globalisation of business education.

Online education, in theory, can transcend the offline particulars of geography. By Aghi's claim, it has already starting happening. "Because there are no geographical boundaries," he exults, "we are able to connect our students to a global community of professors and students with different cultural and industry backgrounds."

So far, so good.

Will it stay that way? This depends on market forces. This also depends on the visionaries of education, the script-writers of the roaring mouse story "" as the online future gushes our way in a torrent of 0s, 1s and fuzzy inbetweens.

It depends on visionary passion for education as it should be, not just education as plainly demanded.

It's dreamy, but true. If globalisation means downloads of the same stuff from one big fat server into every student's head around the world, it's doomed. If globalisation means blended thoughts, it will rock, sir.