The Nouveau & The Niche

ike any other academic session, last year too Indian B-schools saw their usualmix of ups and downs. On the positive side, the most important development has been theinitiative of private institutes in critical areas such as research, entrepreneurship andMBA innovations. Although some are still behind the top IIMs in terms of overall scores,non-government schools are catching up fast. Don't be surprised if the IIMs do lose theirtop positions in our B-School rankings in the near future. It's now in the realm ofpossibilities.

For budding MBA students, the great news is the placement scenario. For the fourthconsecutive year, B-schools saw spectacular placements; IIM-A, for instance, recorded amaximum domestic salary offer of Rs 60 lakh per annum which, with bonus and other perks,may go up to Rs 1 crore. In other top institutes, the average salary grew by 20-30 percent. There are two main reasons for this: manpower shortage as the economy gallops aheadat a brisk rate and quality strides made by some institutes. This is probably the besttime to go for an MBA degree from a top institute.

Our past surveys have always bemoaned the lack of emphasis on research in B-schools. Evennow, the situation is not too impressive (see column Thinking is Working on page 96). Afew private B-schools are working harder in this area, compared to their state-runcounterparts. imt Ghaziabad and Narsee Monjee have made it mandatory for their faculty towrite research papers. ICFAI Business School's (IBS) three-year teacher training programmehas been a hit; it plans to train 200 teachers a year.

Like IIM-A, IBS has maintained its momentum to develop case studies. It is one of thelargest contributors to the European case clearing house, and its cases studies are usedby global publishers like McGraw Hill, John Wiley, Prentice Hall and Oxford UniversityPress. The T.A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), which took the initiative in convertingsummer internships into output-based case development, has formalised over 600 cases infive years. Some second-rung B-schools are also trying to cultivate a research environmenton their campuses. SIES College of Management Studies in Navi Mumbai has launched IdeaResearch, where students are motivated to take up original projects. These papers arepublished by the institute, which has decided to start a rolling trophy for the best 'idearesearch' project.

Another major concern has been that B-schools don't devote enough time to developentrepreneurship. This special issue looks at the causal, enabling aspect in therelationship between management institutes and the entrepreneurial abilities displayed byits students. Slowly many colleges are focusing on this aspect. The Indian School ofBusiness (ISB) and S.P. Jain Institute have emerged as the leaders in this area, but ofthe over 1,300 schools, less than a dozen have an effective incubation centre to cultivateenterprise. The Bharathidasan Institute of Management (BIM) does events to promotecreativity, team spirit and entrepreneurship. In one of its events, first-year studentsare divided into teams and have to come up with new products that can be sold to theirtarget market—the second year students. Last year, a shoe with replaceable soles wasadjudged the best product. Two of its students were selected for the final round of theGlobal Social Entrepreneurship Competition conducted by the University of Washington inSeattle. In another competition, BIM students won the first prize for their plan to employvisually challenged employees for customer care services. XLRI has set up anentrepreneurship centre to enable budding businessmen to get financial assistance and givedirection to their new ventures.

Industry interaction has always been one of the crucial aspects for a school's success. Toovercome their disadvantageous location, some of them have found new ways to reach out tothe industry. XLRI, for instance, has introduced a CEO forum; 18 CEOs, including sixforeigners, visited XLRI last year. TAPMI set up an exclusive centre for executiveeducation in Bangalore. This initiative is largely meant to provide avenues for faculty tointeract with industry representatives.

While university departments continue to struggle with red tape to match their curriculumwith industry trends, others have proactively updated theirs. Numerous upcoming areas ofknowledge and contemporary practices were incorporated into S.P. Jain Institute's courses.Delhi-based IMI has opted for team teaching in courses like infrastructure projectfinance, where multi-disciplinary focus is necessary.

The Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), which recently introduced thefirst-ever executive programme in retail in partnership with Philadelphia University andReliance World, has set up prototype malls and stores on the campus to simulate thefundamentals of retailing. bimtech has added cutting-edge courses which cater to thedemands of emerging sectors such as MTB (management tools in business—this is beingwidely used by global companies based on a Bains Consulting report), cyber marketing, ITinfrastructure management, and commodity derivatives and trading.

t's in the area of campus infrastructure that B-schools have shown maximum growth.IIMM,KIIT Bhubaneshwar, SCMS Cochin, IBS Hyderabad and Alliance have constructed world-classcampuses. TAPMI is in the process of building a new campus of over 4 lakh sq ft for whichit has acquired 40 acres in Manipal. XIMB is all set to start construction of a new campuson 100 acres in Bhubaneshwar. Now many B-schools have wi-fi campuses and modernamphitheatre classrooms equipped with LCD projectors.

A few B-schools like IMT Ghaziabad, XLRI, S.P. Jain have even established campuses abroad.IMT's Dubai campus has faculty from the US and Europe. The Punjab College of TechnicalEducation (PCTE) in Ludhiana has linkages with B-schools in Pakistan, Bangladesh, SriLanka, UK and several African countries. The institute has also been allocated 60 acres toset up a campus in Tanzania.

Those who find difficulty in setting up physical campuses have focused on interactivedistance-learning programmes. IT firm Hughes India has successfully used technology tocreate an interface between students and B-schools separated by distance. Even instituteslike IIM-B, IIM-C, IIM-K, XLRI, IIFT and Narsee Monjee are teaching students seated inspecialised classrooms situated miles away through satellite. In the last two years, over4,750 students have completed a management programme through this platform. With 50classrooms in 34 cities, it suits the continuing education needs of executives. In fact,executive MBA is catching up. Inspired by ISB, IIM-A, IIM-B, S.P. Jain and IBS havestarted a one-year programme for students with work experience.

In a sense, different models are successful in different places. If the visiting facultymodel has been found suitable in many schools in Mumbai and Pune, a one-man show is alsoworking in some B-schools like IIMM, Pune. Here, Colonel Balasubramanium personallysupervises every aspect of his institute, from admissions to placement. The students do acourse on self-discovery and personality development too. There are no holidays andstudents are made to work seven days a week. This, says Bala sir, as he is popularlyknown, is to instil the capacity to slog which would hold them in good stead when theyjoin industry.

The bad news is that government interference is increasing in the functioning ofB-schools. The All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulatoryauthority, has been accused of harassing institutes with its archaic laws. Some schools,that got overwhelming responses from the industry were issued notices and their directorswere threatened with dire consequences like derecognition and closure. Instead offacilitating the growth of quality education, AICTE seems to be in control-freak mode,which is a remnant of the licence-quota raj. It is also debatable whether managementeducation can be considered technical education. Should it be governed by this body atall?

n any case, going by placement statistics, the industry itself doesn't seem to careabout recognition from AICTE or any other government body. Experts agree success in themarketplace is the best way to judge any institute. In our rankings, we have not given anyweightage to whether a school has AICTE approval or not. Many institutes in our rankingmay be without such approval—this has been highlighted so that students are aware ofthis fact.

Even the IIMs have had their share of problems with the Union human resourcedevelopment ministry, which has repeatedly encroached on their autonomy with salvos likereservations, control over their corpus of funds, and asserting their power to choosedirectors whose term will expire this year. The IIMs in Lucknow, Indore and Kozhikode faceanother problem. They are struggling to get over their location disadvantages inattracting faculty and industry. IIM-L, therefore, has set up a new campus in Noida. IIM-Kdirector Krishna Kumar feels his institute is ready to take off although he is pained bythe lack of collaborative spirit between the various IIMs. A joint effort between them, hefeels, will radically elevate the quality of research. As of now, the race is on amongsome of them to poach faculty from each other's turf.

In conclusion, as industry struggles to reach out to the growing number of consumers inemerging economies, the biggest challenge for B-schools perhaps is to catch up with thepace of changes in the professional world. Says Prof S. Singhvi, one of the top-ratedmarketing gurus: "The faculty in most of B-schools is getting outdated. It's achallenge to motivate and enable them to update themselves. We should havespecialist-faculty, but due to a variety of reasons like heavy teaching load they turn outto be generalists like primary school teachers."

Sadly, faculty development is not a top priority in most B-schools. Our survey found thatthe spends on faculty development was less than 5 per cent of revenues in more than 80 percent of the B-schools. Most of them lacked an environment that could give freedom forfaculty members to experiment with new ideas. Professors' salaries are low and are adeterrent for competent minds to join this profession. As a result, the ratio of visitingfaculty and teachers with a 'moonlighting' approach is on the rise. This is mirrored inthe learning outcome of students. This is what leads to the situation where industry hiresstudents at the graduate level, and then has to impart training to help them develop therequired skillsets. This is a serious concern which can undermine the relevance ofmanagement education in the near future.

(The author heads Cfore, a market research firm)