B-schools advised to enhance quality

India has become home to more than a thousand institutes offering management education today.

In such a scenario, do all these B-schools add value or are they just money-minting institutes offering degrees but no value, was the topic of discussion at the Indian School of Business (ISB) on Saturday.

At the panel discussion, while there were representatives of B-schools in the form of Bakul Dholakia, director, IIM-A, people at the other end of the spectrum in the form of Indrajit Gupta, deputy editor of Businessworld too participated.

According to Indrajit Gupta, mushrooming of management schools has become a worrying phenomenon as barring the top few, the remaining have problems in the form of no permanent faculty, cancellation of classes and no good placements.

"Besides, most of them focus only on inculcating analytical skills among the students and not on soft skills, emotional quotient and team spirit, that are essential qualities required on a day-to-day basis," he added.

Gupta leads Businessworld's annual 'Great place to work' survey and also led the team, which recently brought out the 'The Businessworld B-School Guide 2006'.

P Viswanath, founder-director of Triumphant Institute of Management Education (TIME), the leading CAT training centre in India, believes that though B-schools add value in terms of placements, confidence-building and deadline orientation, there is low focus on people-skills, especially on how to deal with government and quasi-government agencies.

"B-schools have also been cultivating 'We are the best' notion among the students. In fact, companies should also look at de-emphasising on MBA graduates for placements," he added.

Dharni Sinha, chairman of COSMODE, who had recently spoken against the IIMs' decision to keep away from B-School surveys, said that the B-schools add value in terms of creation of perspective, professionalism and pragmatism among students.

Representing B-schools, Bakul Dholakia said that the top institutes do add value no matter which way one looks at it.

"Emphasis is on interactive learning, multi-disciplinary training and teamwork. Besides, regular training sessions even for executives are organised. And, considering that the students are freshers, the return on investment that they get is also phenomenal," he added.

Ravi Yadavalli, assistant vice-president (quality six sigma) for multi-portfolio businesses with GE Capital, illustrated that GE hires most of the MBAs at the agent level rather than at managerial.

"This shows that 90 per cent of the B-schools today are not up to the mark. Stress should be laid on qualitative aspects like decision-making ability, risk-taking ability and opinion stating," he explained.

"There was a time when at Telco, we decided against recruiting students from IIMs because we realised that the desire to learn was in people from outside the B-schools. Things have, however, changed today," Arun Maira, chairman of Boston Consulting Group India, said.