Higher Education in India is going through a positive transformation since the expectations are on the rise and the regulatory mechanisms are becoming more stringent .
Both the engineering and the MBA programmes in their current format have reached saturation point and need to be reinvented for survival in the long run .The demand for doing an Engineering degree would continue; however the aspiring students would be more choosy about where they would like to study.
This means the institutions with a good brand value would be in greater demand. There is also a trend wherein the integrated kind of programmes are becoming more popular — BTech plus MBA done in five years or the five year integrated course in law. Another trend is the increasing popularity of architecture and design as standalone careers .The demand for B Arch and B Design has gone up significantly in the last five years and the aspirants numbers have multiplied exponentially.
The MBA programme too has reached its pinnacle of glory and now is under scrutiny and review. Here too the aspirant has become more choosy and would like to join a preferred institution of his choice based on its brand value.
Further aspirants are now clearly seeking outcomes which are measurable at the end of the course i.e they are almost expecting an employment guarantee. New MBA specialisation's such as digital media marketing, big data analytics and such are attracting more students BUT there is a current shortage of seats for these areas of study.
The MBA market has become extremely price sensitive. We see a lot of modified versions of the part-time MBA courses on offer like executive MBA, online MBA, etc but these are at their infancy and need to establish themselves. Excellence in Higher education and high quality is only possible if we have the best of teachers.
The most important step that needs to be taken at the macro level in our country is to position teaching as an attractive option and should be given its place of pride as an employment option. Sad but true, the teaching profession is often seen as a last choice career option or one that executives can pursue after their retirement. We need to position teaching as a premium career option and provide best facilities similar to those we see at the corporates.
The writer is Prof RSS Mani, VP, Institutional Development, ITM Group of Institutions