A field of study which landed students with very lucrative career options this field grew leaps and bounds - attracted so many investors and several institutions started offering MBA programs and the growth was so rapid that by 2013 we have about 4000 colleges with capacity of over 350,000students each year. Incidentally it is a vertical zoom upwards from 200+ colleges in 1990's.
Now, the tide has turned and there are large number (over half) where as many as 30 to 40% of students graduating in recent years are unable to get a job placement when they complete their MBA course work. While the mushrooming of colleges did bring about lot of capacity this came at a cost of quality and big gap in employability.
According to the report on MBA employability by Aspiring Minds shows a dismally low 10% employablity in functional areas. Employability in Operational roles was over 30%.
When the first MBA course was launched at Harvard over a 100 years ago (early 1900's) the objective was to help people who were well trained in their profession to sharpen their understanding of business and therefore run successful businesses. MBA programs across the globe mirrored this and as the decades unfolded the objective changed. Today Business Schools aim at building capability in decision making and leadership skills in a Global Environment, Most schools have a spattering of those who come with some prior work experience thereby forcing the learners to attempt a surrogate - try to learn from others experience, whatever value add that may bring about.
The paradox - when there is over abundance of supply you would expect lot of innovation and improvement in curriculum it is not the case. Reason for this can be attributed to the ingrained Indian' psyche to earn degrees. Social pressure pushes students to opt for a PG degree like MBA even if it is not of high quality. So what could be gaps in ability of the students who come to the corporate world after completing their MBA. We discuss some of these below both from curriculum perspective as well as from the perspective of skills, knowledge and attitudes. While all of these may not be equally representative generalization across all colleges, especially among the top 100 or so colleges in India, it provides some aspects to reflect as some of the those graduating in the lower ranks in these institutes also reflect these gaps.
a) Quick Fix and BOOM BOOM...Approach: Business Management Graduates who join the industry afresh are full of ideas. The problem.. solutions are configured in couple of hours. What should have followed a set of decision making questions is often done in a jiffy. Result: Unworkable and impractical solutions. Often the risk considerations are missing, how the decisions impacts other parts of the organization are missing.... Systems Thinking. Today's Solutions are Tomorrow's Problems.... Remember. We can attribute this quick fix to the speed at which they are used to results.... Google Your Way in 0.052 seconds... seems to be transposed to real life too. Look for quick fix.... solutions.
b) Inference at Cost of Tools & Techniques: More emphasis is placed on learning tools, techniques and so in straight situations the fresh MBA's seem to be very agile in application, but when it comes to drawing inferences, there is a big gap. Taking numbers sorting them into a organized information happens well but drawing inferences and linking the various concepts comes at a premium.
c) Synthesis as a Key Ability: The ability to synthesize, link knowledge they gained across different areas to their decision and analysis is low. While they are very fond of marketing, QM and Operations Management integrating concepts of economics and social and behavioral aspects is much more lower. Complete analysis and reports are prepared focused on strategy, marketing concepts, operations parameters, scenarios etc but economic principles, long term impact, social and behavioral implications, down side risks are left aside maybe unknowingly or assuming they are not that important pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Therefore the down side is that managers often expect that with new MBA's you need to spend lot of time coaching them (hand holding) and this period of working along side goes for long duration even stretching 2 to 3 years into their career. This can cause pressure and frustration among the new entrants as they look for being able to work independently much earlier.
d) Latest Concepts Inducted Late: New trends in industry and business are slow to get into the curriculum and lag by anything between 6 months to 10 years. So at times it looks like Osmosis of Concepts from practice to class room. For e.g. if you did a quick scan of the number among the top 100 B' Schools in India which have a full fledged course on Social Media on their MBA curriculum as a compulsory subject it is a very small fraction. On a sample of 12 of the 100 only 2 had a full fledged compulsory course listed. Even if they do have it they are not listed or among the electives which are easily avoided by the students who don't want to go through the grind. This is so when today every industry and every business is faced with reality of digital and social media strategy being part of the business realities.
e) Ethics & Temporal effects: When working on decisions in business it important that one learns to think analytically, critically, temporally as well as ethically. While students are very good at the first two aspects when it comes to ethical considerations there is a big gap. Similarly the ability to think historically as well as futuristically is restricted. This kind of tilt towards analytical and critical thinking leaves solutions less practical and often end up ... at the discussion level.
f) Communication: While written and oral communication do get sufficient focus in Business Schools it is a problem when it comes to how... How does one communicate critical issues with employees, how do you handle communication around issue management. Fresh graduates are a a loss when it comes to this aspect of communication - including those from premier Business Schools. Communication with employees, issue management, strategic negotiation are important. How communication in virtual and globalized context are different from communication in a factory where people work in one location are very different and need to be clearly understood.
g) Attitudes : You may have great knowledge and skill repertoire but the attitude you have is often the success factor. MBA's these days may think that the degree is a short cut from Class Room to The Board Room. This is far from true. One really has to go through the grind, get his or her hands dirty, learn the ropes quickly and you will surely have a faster career, make better decisions or scale new and uncharted heights for the organization. However today's fresh graduates want to move fast and consider the degree as the propeller for success but that's again a short sighted view. You can get a foot in the door, but post that it is your competitiveness, spirit and contribution that sets the MBA apart.
g) Competitive versus Collaborative Mindset: You are molded to be very competitive. Relative grading, competing with others for marks in the presentation, staying ahead of the curve to get shortlisted for the plum jobs on campus, all tend to stoke the individual person and not the collaborative person in the young students. This is carried forward as they enter the corporate world from their campuses. The need in MBA curriculum is to design ways to encourage and visibly see how collaboration is rewarded. Any success in organizations is culmination of efforts by several functions coming together to work on and delivering.
The above are some of the key gaps in graduating MBA students in recent years. The world of business is changing so rapidly that what we call as gaps today may be dwarfed in next five years by something very different. Society has many expectations from educational institutions and the curriculum is the best benchmark of the pressures acting on the educational institutes being fulfilled. One has to be constantly aware of what those pressures are and how they can be addressed. The way out for those who are graduating in these tough times would be to consider alternative careers.
The straight line may be the shortest and easiest path between two points but when it comes to careers it is not necessarily so and if we understand how this can work to your advantage when there is an imbalance in demand supply (over supply) we can solve a number of problems with respect to employability. How? We will see in a subsequent post.
Now, the tide has turned and there are large number (over half) where as many as 30 to 40% of students graduating in recent years are unable to get a job placement when they complete their MBA course work. While the mushrooming of colleges did bring about lot of capacity this came at a cost of quality and big gap in employability.
According to the report on MBA employability by Aspiring Minds shows a dismally low 10% employablity in functional areas. Employability in Operational roles was over 30%.
When the first MBA course was launched at Harvard over a 100 years ago (early 1900's) the objective was to help people who were well trained in their profession to sharpen their understanding of business and therefore run successful businesses. MBA programs across the globe mirrored this and as the decades unfolded the objective changed. Today Business Schools aim at building capability in decision making and leadership skills in a Global Environment, Most schools have a spattering of those who come with some prior work experience thereby forcing the learners to attempt a surrogate - try to learn from others experience, whatever value add that may bring about.
The paradox - when there is over abundance of supply you would expect lot of innovation and improvement in curriculum it is not the case. Reason for this can be attributed to the ingrained Indian' psyche to earn degrees. Social pressure pushes students to opt for a PG degree like MBA even if it is not of high quality. So what could be gaps in ability of the students who come to the corporate world after completing their MBA. We discuss some of these below both from curriculum perspective as well as from the perspective of skills, knowledge and attitudes. While all of these may not be equally representative generalization across all colleges, especially among the top 100 or so colleges in India, it provides some aspects to reflect as some of the those graduating in the lower ranks in these institutes also reflect these gaps.
a) Quick Fix and BOOM BOOM...Approach: Business Management Graduates who join the industry afresh are full of ideas. The problem.. solutions are configured in couple of hours. What should have followed a set of decision making questions is often done in a jiffy. Result: Unworkable and impractical solutions. Often the risk considerations are missing, how the decisions impacts other parts of the organization are missing.... Systems Thinking. Today's Solutions are Tomorrow's Problems.... Remember. We can attribute this quick fix to the speed at which they are used to results.... Google Your Way in 0.052 seconds... seems to be transposed to real life too. Look for quick fix.... solutions.
b) Inference at Cost of Tools & Techniques: More emphasis is placed on learning tools, techniques and so in straight situations the fresh MBA's seem to be very agile in application, but when it comes to drawing inferences, there is a big gap. Taking numbers sorting them into a organized information happens well but drawing inferences and linking the various concepts comes at a premium.
c) Synthesis as a Key Ability: The ability to synthesize, link knowledge they gained across different areas to their decision and analysis is low. While they are very fond of marketing, QM and Operations Management integrating concepts of economics and social and behavioral aspects is much more lower. Complete analysis and reports are prepared focused on strategy, marketing concepts, operations parameters, scenarios etc but economic principles, long term impact, social and behavioral implications, down side risks are left aside maybe unknowingly or assuming they are not that important pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Therefore the down side is that managers often expect that with new MBA's you need to spend lot of time coaching them (hand holding) and this period of working along side goes for long duration even stretching 2 to 3 years into their career. This can cause pressure and frustration among the new entrants as they look for being able to work independently much earlier.
d) Latest Concepts Inducted Late: New trends in industry and business are slow to get into the curriculum and lag by anything between 6 months to 10 years. So at times it looks like Osmosis of Concepts from practice to class room. For e.g. if you did a quick scan of the number among the top 100 B' Schools in India which have a full fledged course on Social Media on their MBA curriculum as a compulsory subject it is a very small fraction. On a sample of 12 of the 100 only 2 had a full fledged compulsory course listed. Even if they do have it they are not listed or among the electives which are easily avoided by the students who don't want to go through the grind. This is so when today every industry and every business is faced with reality of digital and social media strategy being part of the business realities.
e) Ethics & Temporal effects: When working on decisions in business it important that one learns to think analytically, critically, temporally as well as ethically. While students are very good at the first two aspects when it comes to ethical considerations there is a big gap. Similarly the ability to think historically as well as futuristically is restricted. This kind of tilt towards analytical and critical thinking leaves solutions less practical and often end up ... at the discussion level.
f) Communication: While written and oral communication do get sufficient focus in Business Schools it is a problem when it comes to how... How does one communicate critical issues with employees, how do you handle communication around issue management. Fresh graduates are a a loss when it comes to this aspect of communication - including those from premier Business Schools. Communication with employees, issue management, strategic negotiation are important. How communication in virtual and globalized context are different from communication in a factory where people work in one location are very different and need to be clearly understood.
g) Attitudes : You may have great knowledge and skill repertoire but the attitude you have is often the success factor. MBA's these days may think that the degree is a short cut from Class Room to The Board Room. This is far from true. One really has to go through the grind, get his or her hands dirty, learn the ropes quickly and you will surely have a faster career, make better decisions or scale new and uncharted heights for the organization. However today's fresh graduates want to move fast and consider the degree as the propeller for success but that's again a short sighted view. You can get a foot in the door, but post that it is your competitiveness, spirit and contribution that sets the MBA apart.
g) Competitive versus Collaborative Mindset: You are molded to be very competitive. Relative grading, competing with others for marks in the presentation, staying ahead of the curve to get shortlisted for the plum jobs on campus, all tend to stoke the individual person and not the collaborative person in the young students. This is carried forward as they enter the corporate world from their campuses. The need in MBA curriculum is to design ways to encourage and visibly see how collaboration is rewarded. Any success in organizations is culmination of efforts by several functions coming together to work on and delivering.
The above are some of the key gaps in graduating MBA students in recent years. The world of business is changing so rapidly that what we call as gaps today may be dwarfed in next five years by something very different. Society has many expectations from educational institutions and the curriculum is the best benchmark of the pressures acting on the educational institutes being fulfilled. One has to be constantly aware of what those pressures are and how they can be addressed. The way out for those who are graduating in these tough times would be to consider alternative careers.
The straight line may be the shortest and easiest path between two points but when it comes to careers it is not necessarily so and if we understand how this can work to your advantage when there is an imbalance in demand supply (over supply) we can solve a number of problems with respect to employability. How? We will see in a subsequent post.
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