Having the right skills in the workplace is becoming more and more important especially when it comes to management programmes. Hence, it is necessary that MBA courses are based on real business problems rather than trying to cover all the theoretical concepts in a classroom, says DINESH SINGH
In today’s world, the importance of business skills is growing but at the same time, relevance of management programme is going down. Hence, there is a huge threat for existing management education eco-systems as well as an opportunity to disrupt it. let’s understand it by asking a question — in last 100 years, what has changed in the overall business landscapeIJ The answer — a lot. The way we manufacture, reach out to customers, work in teams, build organisational structures are completely different. Not only the core industries like finance, health care, food evolved, but new industries like technology and Internet intersected with all other industries to change the rules.
Now, what about changes in MBA education since Amos Tuck started world’s first MBA programmeIJ Hundred years back, we use to go to MBA campuses, learn basics of business from experts in the classrooms, work on due submissions, and build relationships with our batch-mates. Does that sound any different from what we do today in our business schoolsIJ
Business schools carry an ever-greater burden of keeping up with the industry demand for leadership in number and quality — readiness to perform. This requires business schools to innovate and keep up with the pace of change.
Key areas of change
Processing information, not just providing information: In the 90s several people carried notes with them when they graduated from top schools, for reference. Information was only available in expensive books, and hand-written journals. Today, one can find most information for free or very inexpensively. This is putting more and more pressure on changing the focus from collecting the dots to connecting the dots. The future schools will focus more on learning rather than teaching.
The difference between teaching and learning is similar to difference between tasks and achievements. Teaching is a task, and making students learn is an achievement. We may be performing our tasks but might not be achieving the right results. This will require our faculty to act as a coach rather than a lecturer.
Workplace as a learning playground: The proliferation of manufacturing led to campus like companies in the first half of 20th century. Everybody lived together and worked together. With knowledge industry being the main growth driver now and rapid globalisation, typical businesses tend to be much more distributed. Various tasks including managing teams, motivating people, and negotiations are performed in a distributed environment today. Business schools however are still pre-dominantly campus-based. Do they really need to be campus basedIJ
Context is king in education and there is nothing better than a real business situation to learn from. Using the real world as the learning playground will add more to learning and creating the business leaders who will be ready to perform. We have seen dramatic results across the country where working students solves problems related to their present workplace applying business concepts.
Reducing the cost: No education programme is more Return on Investment driven than an MBA programme today. Think about this — one is a professional earning Rs 5 lakh and growing steadily in a career and thinking of joining a high quality MBA programme with a fee of Rs 10-25 lakh. With the opportunity cost of leaving the present job, the overall cost for the programme can easily be more than Rs 25 lakh. With this in mind, what will be the primary criteria of choosing an MBA courseIJ Wouldn’t it be the expected output salary after one finishes the programmeIJ Is the right way to think about the educationIJ
If one is the kind of person who wants to build business skills to take further risks in the career — may be become an entrepreneur or join an evolving industry — would one be willing to spend the amount to pursue MBA knowing the short term salary increase will not be significant after MBAIJ With the huge increase of fees, our business schools are deterring right prospective candidate to join the programme.
A risk-taker candidate will rather spend the fee money experimenting and will not enroll in the programme. On the other hand, MBA schools will keep attracting students who are looking for a steady career growth through their MBA and possibly not take too many risks. The question to ask — shouldn’t business education increase the appetite for risk and do something innovativeIJ Our MBA education systems are built on the principles of scarcity where less number of students end up paying for the whole structure. In future, (perception of) quality of MBA education will not be proportional to the fee.
Signs of change
Enabled by technology and following on the three principles, we have already started seeing multiple changes in business education. Free online courses (Massive Open Online Course) like Coursera, Udacity are enrolling thousands of students who have learning as their primary goal rather than certifications. One more change happening is the focus on out of classroom learning in traditional business schools as well. Harvard and Stanford have increased the field focus during their entrepreneurship courses, and several others like Ohio are delivering a lot of problem-based learning rather than a lecture based education. Programmes for working professionals are more real business problems based rather than trying to cover theoretical concepts in a classroom.
The future of MBA lies in solving the challenges by leveraging opportunities presented by technology to focus on applicability and practicability of concepts and not only knowledge. This might mean a ground up design of curriculum that helps students learn while applying. It may mean transferring the traditional burden of lecturing to technology while the faculty plays a greater role of a coach. It may mean making a business school look more like a distributed knowledge-based company using technology for collaboration.
(The writer is director, student experience, Sunstone Business School)