I was reading a book called ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’ written by an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus; which chronicles 25 success stories of people from the institute. One thing that is common to all of them is that they worked someplace before they became entrepreneurs.
Why I thought about this is because there is a strange thing going on in today’s world, and I’m pretty disturbed by that. Look at the sheer number of management colleges coming through every year, and you will know the reason of my distress. Not that I have anything against these new (and several old) management colleges, but I seriously feel that the purpose is defeated.
In Andhra Pradesh (and many more states in our country), the same precedent has already been set by Engineering colleges. Today, most of the engineers graduating from our region (85165 seats in Engineering colleges according to 2008 count – source – indiastudychannel.com) are counted just as graduates; and the same phenomenon is happening with MBA and MCA colleges now. Afterall, how many MBAs can a region support?
In these times of corporate cutbacks, most of the graduates will not be able to find good employment. And a majority of them will look to study further. The bulk of that majority will get into MBA colleges, and what I am worried about (not personally, but still…) is about what most of those people will do once they post-graduate! Already many management passouts are out competing with graduates for the few choice jobs available in the markets (and most of the times it is the under graduates that walk away with the jobs) and that is cause for angst! Think about what will happen 2 years later, when all these MBAs getting enrolled now will come out qualified!!
The other part of the hype (and my concern) is the amounts being charged. All of the new management colleges I know of are charging upwards of a lakh rupees each year, in spite of having no track record to boast of. Few colleges that have started last year have already decided to hike the fee by 50% this year for this years intake; and that, according to me is pretty ambitious. When new management colleges are charging those kind of monies, the older ones naturally will look to charge higher, and any decent college worth its name will already get you to fork out over 5 lakhs for the 2 years. What they will do in the next couple of years is anyone’s guess.
I firmly believe that like in the USA (and some of the best colleges in India), MBA should only be done after a couple of years of working. Afterall, the 25 stories mentioned in the book are all of people who’ve turned entrepreneur after working for a few years with some of the best companies around. Else, MBAs also will just become like a general graduation course; albeit a very costly one!
Is this just my perception?
1 comment:
Just saw this one!! and I do believe that MBA soon after Bachelor's of anything is useless. 'Useless' could be a harsh word, but that is what it is according to me. I fail to understand, that at the age of 22, when the fresh graduate comes out of the college and has never worked, how can he go to master the business administration? From my experience of seeing other MBAs in India, I only feel that the value of MBA is decreasing as much as that of Engineering. Some people I know have finally learnt to make power point presentations, presentable word documents and using Google to do the rest of their work -- Thanks to their MBA!!
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