Too many CATs...

BS OPINION

It was a crime waiting to happen. The surprise is that it didn't happen earlier. Monday morning's splash on the leakage of test papers for the Common Admission Test (CAT) offers proof that there is a huge gap between the demand for, and supply of, quality management education in India.

With B-schools proliferating at every street corner, the numbers apparently tell the wrong story.

There are around 900 B-schools approved by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and they collectively offer between 50,000 and 60,000 seats.

With three lakh students seeking B-school seats annually (around 1.25 lakh of them for schools that accept CAT scores), this gives aspirants a theoretical probability of 1:5 or 1:6 in terms of admission "" not a bad ratio for a country like India.

The catch is that the bulk of the 900 cannot be called 'management' schools by any stretch of imagination. Most of them may be meeting the AICTE's norms in letter "" a minimum faculty strength of seven, some investment in infrastructure, etc "" but seldom in spirit.

If placement salary levels are any indicator of the quality of an institute's pedagogy, the differentials are at least 1:10 between average salaries at the best schools and those at the bottom of the pile.

This explains the rush for the top schools "" and the premium on entry into the IIMs. If anything is proliferating even faster than B-schools, it is the number of coaching classes that prepare graduates for tests like CAT.

Put excessive competition, a supply shortage, low tuition fees, and good old corruption together and you have the right recipe for the kind of CAT scandal that we have on our hands.

There is, however, another way of looking at the problem "" that there are too many people seeking a management education who don't need one.

As well-paying jobs are relatively few, compared to the number of educated graduates this country throws up every year, students may be seeking an additional management degree merely to improve their overall chances in the job market.

This speaks poorly of the quality of our general college-level education system "" which is where one needs to make investments for improving quality.

There are two shortages (quality B-schools and quality graduate-level colleges), and two bounties (too many bad schools and too many candidates seeking MBAs) that need addressing.

This can be done if the norms for B-school recognition are toughened by the AICTE, in consultation with businessmen, HR professionals and academics, and the AICTE's own abilities upgraded.

Those who want to should be allowed, indeed encouraged, to seek twinning arrangements with reputed institutes overseas.

Formal rating systems could be introduced, and those that drop below the threshold should be de-recognised.

Simultaneously, the government needs to realise that good education comes from institutionalising the autonomy of institutions such as the IIMs, and not by excessive intervention or subsidies.

This means B-schools must have the freedom to raise fee levels to a point where they are financially self-sufficient and can attract the best faculty, especially those with industry experience.

Financial self-sufficiency will also help them expand and improve the availability of seats to aspiring students.

HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi struck a jarring note recently when he observed that the IIMs should keep fee structures low because they have been set up with public money.

This would make then dependent on the government for hand-outs, reducing their financial autonomy, and increase still further the pressure for admission.

Politicians may like that, but one can be sure that the institutes will go downhill after that. The corporate sector and well-meaning academics must fight this pernicious idea.