Here Comes The Sun

But thanks to competition, and industry demand for micro-specialisation, broad categories are slowly losing relevance. Hence, B-schools are breaking broad subjects into specifics and training students in the nitty-gritty. For example, in finance alone,XLRI in Jamshedpur offers stand alone options like risk insurance, creative accounting, advance management accounting, valuations andM&AS. Says Sabyasachi Sengupta, head (placement), XLRI: "The specialisations are market-driven and have to be current and relevant in their respective sectors."

But there’s more to it. B-schools are also bringing industry right into the campuses to give students a feel of real experiences in specific sectors. Pune-based Symbiosis has a lab set up by telecom major Cisco Systems which provides students an opportunity to understand how telecom infrastructure is managed in real situations.XLRI has courses where the teaching faculty is entirely outsourced from industry. Last year, one of its finance courses was taught almost exclusively by a seven-memberICICI team.

But even this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the last couple of years, top schools have introduced new courses to cater to the needs of sunrise sectors, be it telecom or logistics or biotechnology. Explains B.B. Mathur, in-charge of student coordination at the Institute of Management Technology(IMT), Ghaziabad, UP: "The demand-and-supply position in the industry will always throw up the need for new specialisations and courses. Change in specialisation is today a necessity." AddsXLRI’s Sengupta, "Companies are constantly giving us feedback and demanding specialised training in specific areas. Some new students have also started asking for such courses. We have to move with the times."XLRI floats 4-5 new electives or specialised courses every year to suit changing demands.

Sample this. The Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management has a specialised course for creating professional managers in the telecom industry.XLRI has introduced one on logistics while IIM-C is concentrating on new courses in banking and information management. The Noida-based Amity Business School offers as many as 20 options like insurance, customer relations(CRM), biotechnology, telecom, international business, operations, and leadership and entrepreneurship. SaysIIM-C’s Ranjan Das: "It’s a constant process. Some sectors open up while others die. The demand for specialist managers in new sectors will always lead to a demand for specialised training at business schools."

For management institutes, it’s a change in approach towards education. Till recently, the system was that all students studied the same subjects in the first year and then decided on their specialisations. Now, B-schools are forcing students to make their choices right in the beginning. Says Balvinder Shukla of Amity Business School: "Darwin’s theory is much more appropriate today than before. In today’s environment, companies don’t want management trainees, they want managers who can start delivering from day one. No one has time to train graduates. So we have to do it at the education level, provide the right options." Adds AtulChauhan, CEO of the Amity group: "What corporates are looking for is a person with an analytical mind, one who is updated with the key issues of a particular industry. The students have to be tuned into the sector even before they join".

Amity has set up expert groups comprising top executives and CEOs to advise it on which line of education will be best suited for various sectors. The curriculum is updated every six months. Symbiosis too has a board of study with 30 industry representatives to advise the institution. And another advisory committee comprisingCEOs. Other schools too have similar advisory set-ups.

Obviously, such close interactions between B-schools and industry have thrown up interesting innovations. The Mumbai-based Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Sciences(NMIMS) has introduced a whole new concept course called MBA Technology. Students in this five-year course are taught engineering for the first three years, management in the last two. The institute conducted a survey of 300 engineers and 40 companies in 19 cities and found that a majority of engineers went in forMBAs at some point in their careers. The survey concluded that most firms want to absorb people who had done both. The combined course was a logical response. Says N.M. Kondap, V-C,NMIMS deemed university: "This way, the students not only save a year, they also get attuned to industry demands. We have to make conscious efforts to integrate technology with management because that is what industry wants."

As new sectors grow rapidly, the demand for newer streams of management studies will spring up. Says Mathur: "In the next couple of years, with insurance and healthcare industries developing fast, specialisedMBAs in these fields will be in demand and companies will look increasingly beyond marketing and finance MBAs for these jobs." Kondap also feels that with the services sector growing in leaps and bounds, demand for services management studies will go up. Within this, Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management director Virender Kapoor feels Service Delivery Management will assume importance as the sector grows further and business schools will have to look into that. Others like information and systems will need to be looked at too as Indian companies increase their IT applications.

Keeping an eye on future demand, several business schools are also concentrating on relatively nascent areas. Amity has started technical courses in nanotechnology, forensic sciences and cyber crimes, which would be developed into independent management courses as and when the sectors mature. IMT has started an M.Tech course on bioinformatics, which will ultimately morph into a management course. Thanks to the increasing global exposure to Indian managers, there is a growing interest in studies related to international business. IMT has a global MBA course under which students spend 11 months at the Fairleigh Dickinson University in the US, including a six-month internship in leading US corporations likeIBM and GE.

But then, innovation and flexibility have to be a way of life in business schools. A few years ago, owing to pressure and demand from industry, almost all B-schools introduced courses in Human Resources Management. The story with financial services is similar and recently, with a surge in the telecom sector and demand for telecom managers, specialised telecom management courses sprung up at different schools. They are only getting refined and more specialised now.

Let’s also remember that the IIMs’ desire and inclination to introduce new courses is driven by another factor—money. Says Das: "Most people are driven by money and glamour. While there are enough jobs in the market, the best salaries are not there. We cannot go for companies or sectors where the minimum salaries are under Rs 4-6 lakh. We have to look at only those sectors where companies can pay at this level."

However, despite these new courses, there are real challenges facing Indian B-schools. For one, most of them are just not bothered about creating managers in the Indiancontext. They seem to be blindly following the western model of enabling students to get jobs in the corporate industry set-up. But what about the rural economy, where in the comingWTO regime, India will have to compete with global players? What about the fact that the little-known B-schools are just helping students to essentially become sales people, with a monthly salary of not more than Rs 7,500 a month? What about the fact that top B-schools in India should really be creating entrepreneurs in the small- and mid-size segments, rather than managers for the big Indian and foreign firms? What about... the questions seem unending.