“If you go into law or medicine or architecture, you’re expected to go into a residency or apprenticeship before you’re allowed to practice on your own. Unfortunately, business schools pretend that any student with an MBA should be a great manager right out the gate, regardless of real-world experience.” — Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of Organisational Behaviour at Stanford University
In today’s post-industrial epoch, the education system — which is internally fragile and externally pretentious — has successfully made us to believe that ‘MBA is an essential ingredient’ but little do they tell us that ‘MBA is actually a failed product’. Thanks to the culture of ‘conspicuous consumption’ as normalised in our society. Often MBA is pursued to ‘gain’ snob value and ‘attract’ marital prospects, especially in Indian context, because ‘mera beta MBA hai’, while the beta (son) tries his hard luck on job portals, LinkedIn and Tinder. There are many such ‘betas’ and even ‘betis’ (daughters) who are lucidly caught in a catch-22 predicament than ever before.
With an experience of 8 years in interdisciplinary academics (including teaching MBA students) at postgraduate level, I confirm that the degree is merely a schizophrenic passport to secure employment, in the service sector, in an economy, that has no sound manufacturing policy. It would make sense to pursue vocational training or skill-based education or no-MBA et al, compared to MBA, which are much in deficiency in education sector. To this, I am 101% certain that Elon Musk and Mukesh Ambani would reckon with my premise. The founders of OYO and BYJU are not MBA graduates. Anil Ambani is an MBA grad., but he’s financially broken.
“If earning an MBA…is something that you’re doing because you want to make more money, rather than because you’re really interested in how businesses function, you’ll probably be disappointed.” — Anna Ivey, career counsellor and former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago
A report in 2015–16 by ASSOCHAM (Association of Chamber of Commerce) revealed that 220 business schools were closed in the period 2013–2014 due to: 1) improper infrastructure, 2) legal compliances, 3) poor placements and 4) sub-standard teaching methods. The next year (2016), a report from AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) exposed that more than 50% of MBA graduates lack employability and foundational skills to secure decent employment opportunities. The syllabus is also outdated and quite unreal too and vividly facilitates ‘automaton thinking’.
The 2016 Mint analysis of the top 500 companies on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) showed that only 144 CEOs of 466 companies had an MBA. A 2017 survey showed that only 28 per cent of India’s CEOs have a master’s degree in business. We should also note that the ‘Forbes Billionaires List’ of 2020 found that among the top 100, only 11 hold an MBA degree. These are some facts that many aspirants or MBA students do not realise until they get to know the ‘true colours’ of their respective b-schools in the middle of semester-2 or post-summer internship. Ceteris Paribus, interview any engineering student.
Whereas, the non-IIM/IIT B-schools are nothing but premium version of the job portals, masquerading as educational institutes and charging exorbitant fees between Rs 6 lakhs — Rs 12 lakhs for a whole two-year prog. and proffering their pupils with job offers between Rs 20,000 — Rs 35,000 per month, excluding the cost and time invested in coaching classes (especially for entrance tests). These institutes mushroom everywhere and excel in marketing their product (MBA), including selling fancy courses; they anyway know-how to take advantage of many helpless under-graduate students. The ROI (return on investment) is not in equilibrium (between cost/time invested vs CTC p.a.). Any minor boy at a local kirana store would tell you this.
“Our study showed that 56 percent of MBA candidates have admitted to cheating, a rate much higher than other graduate students. Perhaps getting the degree is more important to them than the knowledge gained along the way. It’s the ‘bottom-line’ mentality — that performance is what matters, not how you get there.” — Linda Klebe Trevino, Professor of Management and Organization at the Penn State Smeal College of Business
