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Management education must have global focus: AICTE chairman

Staff Reporter

Questions rationale behind mushrooming of specialisations

BANGALORE : The Chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education, Damodar Acharya, said global competition was just round the corner and urged everyone concerned to wake up and get relevant. At a conference `Management Education — An International Comparison' organised at Electronic City campus here by the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (XIME), Prof. Acharya wondered whether the country's management education was responsive to issues such as making domestic supply chains globally competitive. "Our management education should have a global focus, understand global business, ethics, cultures, philosophy... Understanding people will be the key issue," he said.

Traditionally the country's management schools were in four-semester MBA pattern. "The curriculum of these institutions are generally offshoots of the Commerce departments, with hardly any emphasis on industry or continuous evaluation. Is that kind of education relevant today."

No exposure

Another trend was fresh graduates being picked up and trained as managers. "These freshers have absolutely no exposure to the industry. Even school kids are being taken in, and granted BBM degrees," he pointed out, adding that even research had taken a backseat.Shortage of faculty was yet another crucial issue. "No good student is keen on joining as faculty. The highest that the institutions has to offer, including the Indian Institutes of Management, is the post of Assistant Professor who are paid about Rs. 25,000 a month. Compare this to almost Rs. 1 crore some students earn in a year," he said.

As on October 31, 2006, as many as 94,704 management schools were registered in the country. But the actual count of all the schools, including the unregistered ones, could be between 1.2 lakh to 1.5 lakh. All India Management Association (AIMA) president Subir Raha said the industry had to fund management education, as it had realised that it was the beneficiary ultimately beneficiary of quality management schools. To boost quality, he suggested, AIMA could set up a National Centre for Case Studies, a credible platform where resources could be pooled in a very transparent manner.

Association of Indian Management Schools president, Shekhar Chaudhuri drew attention to the lack of research and low number of doctorates in management education.

The Hindu and The Hindu Businessline were the media sponsors of the two-day conference.

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