Challenges in Management Education in India - By: westford

What do you think the major problem that we currently face in educational sector?
There are many problems we presently face in education sectors. According to NASSCOM-Mackensy report, the Indian Industry will face its biggest challenge ever due to the shortage of talented and knowledge workers, across Industry, compounded by the fact that only 25 per cent of fresh engineers; and a mere 10% of fresh graduates are actually employable. It is an alarming situation. Adding this with statement of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, former President of India, “Unemployment is not the major crisis for India, it is unemployability”.
It is not possible to put a single reason which brought in to the present chaotic situation amongst the young graduates; there are many stakeholder in it. The transformation should start from the Parent, School, College, University and the Government. We are still following a century old teaching fashion which was followed by the British. In UK, they have made necessary amendments time to time to ensure that they follow the relevant methods suits to the present and future industry requirements; unfortunately we followed the same old methods due to our reluctance to the changes.
Going back to your question, the ultimate aim of education is to get a job which is relevant to his studies, but most of our graduates fail to find out a job in their area of study due to the huge gap between the education and employability. I feel this is the major drawback in our education system since the ultimate objective of getting a relevant job is not been achieved or it made difficult.
Why the UK education is better than other education system?
UK education has many advantages compare to our traditional educational system. There are many different government agencies work together to ensure that the content of education/syllabus is matching with the future and present requirements and it ensures that the student will be competent enough to meet the industry requirements. There is an authority called QCDA (Qualification and Curriculum Development Agency) and their objective to develop the curriculum for the future requirements in line with government future strategies. For example, if the government plan to develop on Tourism Industry in the country in 2015, the QCDA will evaluate the manpower requirement for that time, assess the competency requirement for the people who wants to work in this field in different levels and develop a curriculum to meet the forecasted requirements. So the country will have sufficient number of skilled employees by the time the requirement arises. In other words they are more proactive than reactive. This is an ongoing process in UK and they also give a deadline for admitting the students for the course with the particular syllabus which is normally three years and the Awarding Bodies will not be able offer the same syllabus after this deadline and the new syllabus will be ready by that time with required tweaking to the subjects and contents according to the changing environments and industry requirements. In other words they don’t teach obsolete contents to the students rather focus on the future requirements and make them capable to handle the challenging upcoming requirements.
In addition, the evaluation and assessment system they follow is entirely different than ours. We teach a student for a year and ask him to deliver the results of this one year learning in 3 hours through the examination, which is just a pressure test. How do we expect students to deliver the result in just three hours which he has been taught for a year? In UK system, the assessment start from the day one of his study, they teach theory to understand the concepts and test on their ability to apply the same on real life applications through assignments and project work.
In Indian system, we teach them concept/theories and test them on theory itself, which is the fundamental reason of the existing gap between the education and employment.
What is the role of Schools in developing student potential as successful professional?
Most of the people still don’t understand the importance of initial classes, i.e. KG level, this is the most important period of developing the individual personality and attitude. Regardless of the education and knowledge, the attitude is the major influencing factor in anyone success. KG level is the best time to cultivate a good personality and attitude, but we always ignored this part or never given importance which it is really needed at this stage. In most of the developing countries, the pre-school teachers are the most competent teachers with Masters and Doctorates Degrees and who are capable of molding the young minds to a better persons and successful leaders. They understand the importance of it and they do the required tweaking in the personality and attitude from the young age itself. At the same time I don’t have to tell you the qualification requirement for KG level teaching in India at present and the standard of teaching happens at this level.
What are the key factors considered while recruiting an employee?
We have to understand something; the world has changed a lot during last decades, anything and everything available just a click away. For example, in 80’S a banker need to know A-Z of accounting and related functions, but now everything done by the system including cash dispensing, depositing and the accounting of all this function happens automatically. The present banker doesn’t need to know or do any accounting job other than entering the data to the computer which can be done by any individual after couple of days training. So you can understand the level of transformation happened in industry and the world, an academically brilliant and experienced person’s job been easily replaced by a normal individual who is not even having an accounting background or experience with few days training. The intelligence part of the employee is been taken over by the computers and systems, any complex calculation of information are available on system, then why a company has to hire a brain for that?
Again, I am not saying that the academic brilliance has no use, what I am trying to say that it’s NOT everything. Everyone can’t be a scientist.
During the recruitment process, the academic skills definitely count, at the same time various other skills such as communication skill, written English, interpersonal skills, presentation skills and so on also plays an important role in helping the candidate to get fit for the job. Lack of these skills may adversely affect the candidate’s possibility of landing at the right job during interview stage itself.
While recruiting nowadays, most the corporate companies gives importance to the soft skills set of the candidate, to an extent, more than academic achievements. Unfortunately, this area is been completely ignored or given very less importance in our present educational system and this is one of the main reason for the failure of our fresh graduates to find out a relevant job to his studies
What you think who should initiate the transformation of education sector.
Now I can see many changes are being implemented at the school level and the government is also taking many steps towards transforming the education sector. Still at the University levels, I can’t see adequate changes, though there are some new era universities and business school are trying to implement new systems as an exception. I believe that the change should start from us, from the individuals, i.e. parents, students, teachers etc… Every ones talk about changes, but how we change the system without changing ourselves. As said by Leo Tolstoy, “Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change themselves”. So let us start the change from ourselves first and I am sure that India has one of the best resources in the world and our education system is capable of bringing back its glory, matching with any International standards. Let’s make sure that we will not create unemployable graduates any more. A million miles journey start with a single step, let’s take that single step today!

About the Author

Firoz Babu Thairinil Firoz Babu Thairinil is the Chief Executive Officer of Westford School of Management and an educational transformist. He was a career banker, who has worked for more than 15 years in the banking and financial industry in India and abroad, serving with multinational and local banks. Prior to his venturing into the education sector, he had worked as a Country Head for Retail Banking sales division of a leading local bank in UAE. He has done his MBA from University of Wales, U

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