"Management Education in India-Quality Assurance a Big Challenge!" - Prof. Amity Business School, Amity University Jaipur

Management Education in India-Quality Assurance a Big Challenge!

Introduction

In the modern era, an increasing awareness towards quality and its desirability is being felt among the different stakeholders of the knowledge society. The field of education in general and management education in particular is becoming a focal point of attraction regarding quality consciousness. The various regulatory and promotional bodies like the UGC, the ICSSR and the NCTE are making efforts for better quality enhancement. Institutions like NAAC and NAB are engaged in the quality assessment and accreditation of the institutions imparting education, still quality assurance is far from reality. In this backdrop, an effort has been made in this article to understand the concept of quality in education and to highlight the role of various stakeholders for quality assurance and sustenance and to highlight the prominent reasons to meet the challenges.

Concept of Quality in Education

The term quality denotes something which may be perceived but it could not be rigidly defined. The perceptions for quality may take different issues depending upon the parameters, such as:

1. Fitness for the Purpose
2. Excellence and Standards in Performance
3. The Value for Money
4. A Transformation from the Current Situation
5. Capacity Building
6. Culture

If the purpose for which education is imparted is served, then the education is said to be quality education. The excellence and the standards in performance require well defined process of education for quality education. The value for money requires the quality education in terms of world of work, i.e., employability skills and competence. The criterion of transformation judges quality education as per the well accepted indicators. The capacity building emphasizes quality education in terms of developing rationality, creativity, technical skills, leadership and entrepreneurial qualities and strong character building. The parameter of culture emphasizes quality as a way of life in the entire educational framework which should come from within and should not be imposed upon. On the whole, quality education requires a happy amalgam of competence with values and positive attitude having micro and macro connotations. In nutshell, it may include the following illustrative issues:

• Knowledge Creation, Dissemination and Application
• Social Responsiveness and Community Orientation
• Respect for Expertise, Mutual Trust and Objectivity
• World of Work, Parenthood and Citizenship
• Stress of Knowledge, Skills and Attitude instead of Information and Knowledge only
• Participation, Teamwork and Integrated View
• Transparency, Accountability and Probity
• Collegiality, Understanding others Viewpoints and Learning by Consultation
• Other Contextual, Ethical and Moral Duties.

Essential Attributes for Quality Assurance and Sustenance

The quality assurance and sustenance is closely connected with four important attributes, viz., Contextualization, Institutionalization, Internalization and Implementation. The Contextualization requires the quality education in the broader context of real life situation, while the institutionalization requires the educational institutions to make quality ensuring process as an integral part of their activity. Making quality as one’s habit and nature and not as a strategy comes under internalization.  Implementation focuses on paying attention to details and emphasizing on performance rather than promise, of course, with efficiency and effectiveness. These issues require the various stakeholders in education to play unique but complementary roles to ensure quality education.

Role of Stakeholders

The prominent stakeholders in the field of education are to include:

1. Government
2. Management
3. Teaching Faculty
4. Student community
5. Parents/Society

The role of Government in quality assurance and sustenance is to create and promote a conducive environment for promoting and regulating education in the country. The focal points for this role include policies, planning, resource allocation and governance. The role of management concentrates on institutionalization for quality culture and for this purpose; it has to develop the necessary beliefs, behaviors and procedures. Moreover, the management has to develop the adequate infrastructure, both physical and mental covering vision, sincerity of purpose, purity of heart and mind and conviction of doing the best. Competence, strong commitment and full inclination towards internalization are a must in the role of the faculty. In other words, the teaching pedagogy, the contents of the subject and the method of evaluation should be very strong and effective, not due to compulsion but should be a voluntary regular habit or as a way of life. No amount of quality can be improved and sustained unless it is routinely felt by the students, the ultimate direct beneficiaries. Therefore, the role of students in quality education emphasizes the full realization about the right to quality education and their responsibility towards effective learning. It hardly needs to be emphasized that quality education does contribute substantially to the society and the parents. As such, they are required to play a complementary role to make the campaign of quality education a success. The role of all the stakeholders requires a holistic and integrated approach for strengthening comradeship, building partnerships and striking mutual cooperation. But, the scanning of the roles of these stakeholders is left much to be desired which are not far to seek.

Prominent Reasons

The scanning of the roles of the stakeholders results in to the following prominent lapses which have become the reasons for remaining far behind the goal of achieving quality education in general and management education in particular as outlined below:

1. In the process of transformation, quantitative measurement prevails.
2. While developing the culture for education, commercial considerations largely prevail over ethical and moral values and therefore strong character building and objective functioning remained far from reality.
3. The role of government, management and the faculty is very frequently checkered by the different types of pressure groups having conflicting vested interests.
4. As a part of the implementation package, there has been a little recognition of quality for motivation.
5. Particularly for professional and higher education which requires reasonable selective approach has not resisted to the demand for mass education.
6. The various stakeholders widely have to submit the sense of complacency and self centered approach and attitude.
7. Lastly we talk of public accountability which has to be effective but the public accountability in practice is very weak.

In the above context, one would like to conclude that the quality has to be properly perceived and understood and for assuring and sustaining quality education, the holistic and integrated role of the stakeholders is indispensable. There is much to be desired in achieving the ultimate goal of quality education in the present era.

Prof. (Dr.) Vinita Agarwal
Amity Business School
Amity University Jaipur

Capitalising those 2 years - Asst. Prof., Amity University Rajasthan

Capitalising those 2 years………………

MBA is a transformational experience but there are only few who really gain after getting the professional degree. The few who gain have really capitalised those 2 years and not only gained professionally but also personally.

Are we really manifesting ourselves as MBAs ? The modern day contemporary companies search for performance and not merely degrees. They seek desired behaviour from the newly recruits and you will only manifest yourself as MBAs and display desired behaviours when you have really transformed during your MBA. During your 2 year stint at MBA, you will be participating in various activities besides class room teaching which shall make you learn various skills, which shall result into desired behaviours and which in turn shall result into desired performance in the companies. Let me present before you a list of pertinent questions and answering and acting on them shall help you in gaining from your two years’ experience.

Have you envisioned your future after MBA? As to where you desire to reach 5 or 10 years down the line and how will this professional education help you to reach there and what else you need to do to reach that destination. Have you thought of your dream job, and what does your dream job holder do? Have you ever thought before enrolling in an MBA as to what would you be majoring in (HR, Marketing or Finance etc.) and why? What are the skills or competencies of your desired job or career and how you would learn or get yourself trained in those skills during those 2 years? Have you prepared a list of institutions other than your alma mater which can provide you those requisite skills? Have you met people who are in similar jobs/ careers like your desired jobs/careers? Have you met or try to contact the alumnus of the institution? How do you plan to build your network during these years so that the network would make you employable or enhance the chances of getting the job? Have you introspected your strengths and weaknesses and framed a perspective as to how you would be capitalising your strengths during your MBA? Have you thought of the type of competition you would be facing while trying for jobs in campus or otherwise? How would you handle those challenges? Have you identified the activities besides class room teaching your institution is organising and how would you exploit them as a participant, an organiser or as a mere spectator? How good your communication skills are and how you are improving upon them?  What is your meaningful take off from the class room sessions, the expert lectures, and capsule or certificate courses? Are you an active member of your group, team or club? Are you the member of the placement committee in your college, if no, why not? Do you volunteer yourself for various events or activities in your academic institution or shy away from them?

These are only some of the questions which are thought provoking questions and you should devote serious time in answering these questions and more meaningful questions that come to your mind. In the first take, these questions look very idealistic but I am sure if you take the opportunity to meaningfully address these issues, I firmly believe that you would make the best of those two years.

Dr Himanshu Shekhawat

Asst. Prof.

Amity Business School

Amity University Rajasthan

Why Learning only from Books is not sufficient for MBA?

When I thoght about what should be the “one learning” from my nearly two decades of work experience in industry as well as academics, which I can share with future managers, I was reminded of my marketing professor, who once said “Kotler is Bible of Marketing”. In my first semester, that statement had a profound impact on my barren mind – barren because being a science graduate, I was as clueless about marketing as a rabbit is about the road in the beaming headlight of a fast approaching car. But fortunately the reading of the Kotler book had such an impact on me that I found out that marketing is no fun, partially because of my love with numbers and the lack of numbers in marketing subject. To my utter dismay, marketing in real world was only about numbers. So I thought why not share my experiences with the business management books and how I had to learn, unlearn and relearn to survive in corporate world.

It is not that I am blaming Kotler book or my marketing professor’s love with the book for my entry into the world of finance, but what I have found over the years is that in Indian business education there is an over-emphasis on the usage of books, primarily text books. What has happened is that the business education in India has been primarily influenced by the Indian education systems – both secondary as well as higher and laid a culture of book reading to score good grades in various courses. Let me stand corrected, I am not advocating that there is no need of books for business education, but what I have realized that books cannot be the focal point for business education.

To prove my point of view, I will focus on certain basic requirements of and/or from management students and explain how books fail to deliver on those fronts:

1.         Writing Skills: There are numerous books on business writing, yet none of these focus on how to write professional emails or reports; unfortunately there is no book to explain how to write a sales proposal or a monthly department report. In corporate world, good writing skills are considered equally important as oral communication, believe you me, I have found that writing are far important that oral because oral may be forgotten after some time, but writing is always available in records.

As a finance professional, I was once asked to prepare an appraisal report and present the same to the approval committee (dreaded PowerPoint presentation). After devoting more than a week, what I was able to produce was a 30-page document and 50-slide presentation deck. When I went to my manager for review, he simply looked at the thickness of the documents and politely said (in the managerial tone) that anything more than 5-page appraisal report and 10-slide presentation would be a waste to time. What I found disturbing that when I prepared a project report of 10 pages in my MBA days, my faculty said how you will survive in corporate world if you can’t prepare detailed self-explanatory report and was given a “repeat” remark on the report.

2.         Cross-relationship among various disciplines: I opted for finance specialization. During my stint with a consulting firm, I was working on an engagement to prepare a business plan. I was very enthusiastic about the same as I would be working and playing with numbers. But for the first fortnight we were just working to understand the market dynamics…just wait, which finance book covers market dynamics and its impact on financial projections. If a student opts for finance and marketing dual specialization, he/she ends up studying subjects like Marketing of Services,  Advertising & Sales Promotion, Financial Engineering, Security and Portfolio Management and so on. Which one of these subjects focuses on cross-relationship between marketing and finance? To add one needs to have operational and human resources knowledge also to be successful.

Another school of thought would say Strategic Management subject covers these cross-relationships, but what most strategic management books focus on is an extension of marketing and economics and fails to properly address financial and operational domains.

3.         Start a Business: There has been a change in the way management students look at future in the current economic environment. When I ask my students “What are you future goals?”; majority would always answer “to start my own business.” However, the MBA books are focused on how to manage an existing multi-million dollar company. For an entrepreneur, it’s more important than ever to separate their product from the rest of the pack, to create a niche. Such an approach is not properly documented or focused on in the management books. Their differentiation is focused on how to manage existing business and innovate for the same.

It is very commonly said about management students that they should have entrepreneurial skills and focus on creating jobs rather than doing one. To manage such a trend, it is very necessary that the management books which are written 15-20 years ago also change the direction and provide what is really required in the corporate world to survive – for example, a marketing manager’s tool kit is not only complete by having knowledge about various Ps, but key ingredient of success is to know how to use these Ps for developing marketing strategies by understanding relative and critical importance of various Ps.

Mr. Ashish Kumar

Deputy Director,

Amity Business School,

Amity University Jaipur