A recent survey on the best business schools in India, conducted by research organisation Cfore, comes across as one of the best researched and analysed studies on the state of management education in the country. For the first time, enough emphasis has been given to the fostering of intellectual capital in the country, apart from the usual parameters like facilities, placement, industry interfaces and international linkages. And, as expected, the results achieved on this crucial parameter remain far from satisfactory.
During my stint at the Harvard Business School, a group of CEOs engaged with senior faculty members in an argument on who should be the real customer of the business school. Coming from industry, the CEOs felt that the customer should be the industry since that was where the output of the school was always directed, but the wiser thinking of the program coordinator prevailed when he said the only logical customer for a premier management is the peer group in academia which would judge the quality of research output of the institution.
Maximising quality in this area would automatically push the frontiers of intellectual capital among the academic community leading to better quality of curriculum and overall education.
What inhibits the plethora of management schools in our country when it comes to harnessing and generating intellectual capital? While authorities on the subject like Kiran Karnik have been outspoken for years on the need to improve the quantum of PhDs in our country that is miniscule in comparison not just to the West but even to China, an interesting statement in an article penned by Prof Ratnam of IMI New Delhi talks about the alarming dilution of doctoral research quality after the insistence by the University Grants Commission in the eighties on a PhD for appointment to senior faculty positions in universities.
The focus on the "humanitarian" angle has resulted in a qualification chase with substandard research output, possibly a reason why the serious academic output in the form of cases, peer-reviewed journal articles and books has been so sparse in comparison with other Asian countries and the West.
There is no doubt that if there is one hurdle that faces all high-growth industries in this country, from manufacturing and pharmaceuticals to IT and BPO, it is the supply of talent of high calibre to fuel our ever-growing human resource needs.
This dilemma has seen some right responses in the form of scaling up being attempted in venerable institutions like the IITs, IIMs, NITIE and University Faculties of Management, but has also led to the mushrooming of too many MBA programs of dubious quality whose only benchmark seems to be getting enough of their students placed in industry to attract the next batch of aspiring managers.
An industry like IT and BPO with a focus on practical solutions to complex global technology and process migration issues is also sometimes guilty of looking for a "quick fix" patchwork as the cost of well thought through solutions. A serious focus on building institutions which have the ability to assimilate intellectual capital and provide that to the generations of researchers and learners as a true environment of excellence will serve academia, industry and the country as a whole better in the years to come!
More on possible solutions in future columns.
The writer is Deputy Chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies
