BUSINESS EDUCATION IN POST LIBARALISATIONERA.
---SANKAR THAPPA
Business has become a basic part of our life .So, it has become imperative to have knowledge of the businesses. In broader sense, business includes every activities performed by the human being, but in the narrow sense only economic activities are included. The education and training of such economic activities comes under business education. Business education is that area of education which develops the required knowledge, skills, and attitudes for the successful handling of trade, commerce and industry. The basic objective of Business education is to provide skilled manpower required by the business units in different sections. It aims at improving the quality and productivity of personal in business.
In India business education is classified in two streams:
(i) The commerce stream, which supposed to be liberal in character
(ii) The management stream, which has professional character.
If we look at the regulation of business education in India , we see some of the business education activities come under the technical education and are governed by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and some under non-technical which are governed either by the University Grants Commission(UGC) or by other governing bodies.
The first business school in India- Commercial school of Pachiappa Charities – was set up in 1886 in southern city of Chennai aims in producing clerks for British Government. Business Education in India has seen many transitions since then over the period from commerce orientation which emphasized on knowledge of business transactions and processes from the economics and accounting perspectives to, business education focused on building knowledge about overall business and its various functions, given its stakeholders and the market landscape. Based on this initiatives were taken by both private and public sectors organizations to set schools for business educations resulting in setting of XLRI at Jamshedpur by TISCO followed by IISWBM under University of Calcutta . Then the Govt. of India established the IIMs during 1960-80s. Initiatives were also taken to provide
Business Education at under graduate level by setting BBA programme . Various modes like distance education programme were also adopted making the system more flexible and reaching working executives. There are around 900 institute approved by AICTE providing Business Education programme in India.
The post liberalization period particularly WTO period has changed the economy in tremendous way. The economy was opened for multinational companies. These multinational companies due to their large scale operations, latest technology, huge resources, full utilization of their capacity, huge advertisement, and good promotional efforts quality product and good customer relationship are earning huge profit. The entry of multinational companies has increased the cut throat competition in the economy. This has compelled the Indian Companies to give more stress on quality product; to reduce the cost of production, to provide good after sales service, to adopt modern technology, to engage efficient human resources and to provide efficient human resources and to provide a fair rate of return to the investors.
Since the drastic changes had been taken place in the business scenario; it was but natural that Business Education was also influenced by such changes. Further due to WTO agreement, the education has come under service sector, and as a result of which foreign universities and private universities will enter in Indian scenario from 2005 at large scale, and these will pose lot of challenges to the Business Education vis-à-vis B-schools in the country. In that situation only those B-schools which are fit enough sill survive.
The Indian B-schools shall react to the changes required in the globalised era and strive hard to meet the global benchmarks.
The biggest challenge before the Indian B-schools is to develop quality Business Education system at par with international standard. Each B-school shall work towards quality issues by identifying the key quality issues and achieve them.
Shortcomings of the present Business Education System:
(1) Lack of Talented Faculty: Quality education depends on the talent of the faculty who truly adds value to the student. Except few most of the B-schools don’t have faculties up to the mark. The reason is the low amount of remuneration paid by the B-schools. Many a times these B-schools appoint faculties purely on personal consideration.
(2) Poor Infrastructure Facility: Many of the B-schools have failed to provide infrastructure for the faculties and students. The basic physical structure – Lecture halls, well equipped laboratories , adequate library resources, facilities for sports, recreation facilities and special living facilities with good environment that motivate students to concentrate on lecture and learn and the environment should be the replica of corporate environment. Apart from the physical infrastructure there is a need to have information infrastructure that provide students with high speed terminals to access to the internet. Most of the B-schools don’t have the minimum required infrastructure.
(3) Unmatched Curriculum: Many of the B-schools are catering to old syllabus and therefore loosing a big number of their of their intake capacity. Numbers of institutions are put in the black list because they were not able to revise their syllabus properly.
(4) Over Regulation By Universities: Majority of the B-schools are operating under the jurisdiction of various state universities (except IIMs and some deemed and autonomous universities). Red tapism is the unmistakable feature of the most of the state universities. This red tapism results students end up learning old and outdated syllabi.
(5) Lack of Industry Interaction: Many of the B-schools are failing to have good interaction with industry. Students who have acquired academic knowledge may not be able to fit in the industry, due to the difference between theory that they have studied and the practices prevalent where they are going to work.
(6) Lack of Joint Ventures and Tie-Ups: Many of B-schools don’t have any Joint ventures or Tie-ups with other universities/ B-schools of national and international repute. This is a reason which affects the curriculum, courses etc.
RECOMMENDATION FOR IMPROVEMENT:
Some of the measures which should be taken into consideration for quality improvement by the Indian B-schools are given below:
(1)Up gradation of Faculty Resources: To cope up the rapid changes taking place in the field of Business Education it is very much essential for the faculty members to continuously upgrade their knowledge for their own development as well as for the well being of the organization. The B-schools have to either conduct the up gradation programme of the faculty members at their own place or to encourage the faculty members to attend such programme at other institutes.
(2) Improvement of Infrastructure: The B-schools are needed to improve infrastructure. This is in the form of good lecture halls, well equipped laboratories, and adequate library resources, facilities for sports, recreation facilities and special living facilities with good environment that motivate students to concentrate on lectures and learn. Technology has an important role to play in the development of Business Education. Each B-school must realize the importance of technology integration with B-education. Use of Technology will help the B-schools help B-schools to reach wider population and better delivery .Some of the proven technology being Slide projectors, LCD projectors, Video conferencing, Internet, Direct to Home (DTH) using satellite.
(3)Industry Interaction: The Indian B-schools must interact with the industry for updating the current trends and adopt the technology. There should not be any gap between what recruiters expect and what they get. Both industry and B-schools shall collaborate with each other and understand each other’s expectations resulting in win win situations for both. Each B-school can help industry by providing consultancy, R & D, conducting market survey, providing training programme for executives.
(4) Curriculum: To cope up the changing environment the curriculum of Business Education should cater the needs of the industry and hence it is necessary that curriculum should be modified from time to time. More and more real life case studies should be included in the curriculum. The courses like International Financial Management, International Economics, International Marketing, Strategic Marketing, Industrial Marketing, Service Marketing, Management Control System, Indian legal System, International Business, Security Analysis & Portfolio Management, Derivatives, Entrepreneurship Development , Business Ethics, Quantitative Techniques, International Accounting, etc, are to be included in the curriculum.
(5) Joint Ventures and Tie-ups: For upgrading the curriculum vis-à-vis B-schools and to survive in the cut throat competition there should be tie-ups or joint ventures between B-schools and other universities/B-schools of national and international repute in which there should be academic exchange programme between both the institutes in the area of course modification, joint research and consultancy activities.
(6)Encourage Students to Opt Entrepreneurship as specialization: In the present scenario majority of the management students and higher education students are depending on industry for jobs. Even students who are not studying in IIMs (except 10 to 15 percent) also depend on the industry for jobs. At this situation B-schools should encourage students to opt for entrepreneurship as a specialization, lessens their dependence on industry for jobs and helps them to start their own venture which will create job opportunities.
Conclusions:
If we are not ready to learn better and offer better learning some other may come and takeover the field. Therefore to cope up with the change each of the B-schools has to be learning organization and has to enhance its efficiency by enhancing the capacity utilization and quality thereby becoming more competitive and economical and target oriented.
REFERENCES:
(I) Dr. A.K. Chakrwal, Business Education in Changing Scenario: Asia Pacific Institute of Management.
(II) Prof. Sree Kumar Pattnaik, Indian B-schools in the Emerging Scenario-An overview, Management Trends, vol.2.no.2(April-Sept,2005)
(III) Dr. H.M. Thakar, Chalenges in Management Education , Management Trends vol.2.no.2(April-Sept,2005)
(IV) Business Education , Indian and American Scenario, Indian Management, May,1999
(V) Dr. G. Sudarsana Reddy, Dr. S. Raghunatha Reddy, Mr. B.M. Ramamurthy, WTO and Management Education: Vital Issues ,PratiBimba ,vol.5.issue1.Jan-June-2005
