One of most frustrating things to have noticed in my interactions with the bschools in the last year in India has been the total lack ot foresight in providing radical changes in curriculum or training to prepare their passing out batches about the ways to lead in time of change and also in times of economic downturn.
When I read reviews of how bschools abroad (US/UK/EU etc) have been very active with researched data and updated credits on these areas, it is sad that almost no bschool worth its salt in India has been able to figure these out and provide its students with the advantage that other will surely lack.
Going beyond the syllabus and the curriculum is very tough for any Indian educational setup because thats where performance of faculty members are looked into and no one pays for research or study beyond the scope of books.
Interviewing Bschool freshers (with or without pre-MBA experience) has been an eye-opener for me and probably others as well w.r.t how off-track these guys are to the real-time scenarios. Reading habits and other thigs helping in knowing more than the syllabus books are never practised. I will be happy to be proved wrong by any bschool that goes beyond motivating students to read the Eco-Times or other such journals as per their individual interest levels.
No research for Faculty members, no work on proprietary areas, and total lack ot foresight will hammer home one single point - India does not have Bschools that will grow and help the average post-MBA-intelligence to grow to a level wherein start-ups or SMEs or even good companies can look at excellent talent bases.
In one of my analysis that I am currently working on, I am trying to establish the possibility for an Indian Bschool to achieve the status of some of the IVY Leage colleges and the best of EU Bschools. What is startling is that I started with some 10 factors but in the second iteration I ended up with 5 more factors. (talk about things getting complicated). Any multiple-regression analysis will be able to give some graph that will provide insights into the way these various factors (put-together) will behave if tweaked against relative scales.
The truth is that things are not so cool for the Indian Bschools and they will have to do a lot of catching-up if they indeed wish to make some dent. But that means we are talking about vision statements that are logical and achievable. Any "About Us" statement should tell you about that. But sadly, I havent come across many that are clear in the things that they wish to achieve.
The Solution is a tedious process and will take enormous efforts. But what the heck. We Indians are good in copying others isnt it? I can just hope that some BSchools can start on some changes and others will be able to copy them and probably become better. :)
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
How to lose money and your mind if you are an upcoming Indian Bschool?
A few years back, I was a core-team member of the Marketing and Admissions department of a bschool that was testing waters in terms of introducing new programs and starting to look at enrolling good number of students from across India.
I had enough interactions with the media (all forms of media, for the record) during these times wherein we were planning to go ahead with the admissions season activities. Since, most activities are related to BTL things that a bschool can do to optimize cost and probably reach out to maximum number of candidates, there was money that we needed to spend carefully.
During these interactions and the subsequent plans that many of the top media houses in India provided me with, I realized that the best way lose money in that domain was to listen to these top-notch newspapers and the special things that they do for you.
Some came with readership data, while others with special editions. They were there to make money and the best "bakra" that they found were bschools who let these people feel that education industry in the next best industry to spend good amount of money on Ads. When you show the carrot and dont have any knowledge of how to use it, the donkeys will have a gala time. And thats exactly what I figured out in the next 6 months time of my tenure.
Special editions are the worst possible things that can happen for anyone who is putting in money in newspaper ads. Special ads mean - there will be too many similar ads from BSchools across the geography (taking advantage of some discount) leading to 'Ad-Blindness' that kills the entire plan right away. So what do you do when you dont get response? You feel 'Oh, I guess another impression is required'. You go ahead with repeating the same mistake again and again.
Newspapers were never able to develop anything worthwhile for Educational institutions. It is not a medium that will give you anything. It has been losing sheen for quite sometime now, and the fact that there are certain institutions who spend crores to get Full Page Ads in TOI goes to show that credibility can be bought by those who have the money to do so. As an upcoming Bschool, you dont have the option to compete with those institutes.
Another way that bschools lose money is by participating in God-Foresaken educational exhibitions which are conducted in such a lousy fashion that the best thing one can expect out of these fairs are good lunch and picnic like travel and stay of the bschool representatives.
No event in India has been conducted with some thought. It is like book a space, throw in all sorts of institutes (bschools, finishing schools, modelling schools, lingerie making schools, etc.) and consultants (study abroad, study in India, etc.), throw in all kinds of students (10th standard students asking about MBA) and let everyone decide what they want to do. I know of institutes who "do not have any other choice" but to participate in these hillarious 'melas' in order to get some result. Invariably, everyone always complains about how things did not work. Every BSchool Diro tells the admission team that 'Ek bachcha le karke aana" then they break even for participating the event.
The problem of losing money and losing their minds is primarily because of the shortsightedness of these bschools. Neither they have the professional talent to think through winning strategies and implement the best ATL/BTL activities to get results, nor do they ever think of "zero-based" marketing plans. The best that they do is to plan according to the experience they had from some location last year. It takes a half-brainer to understand that things are dynamic and that the same results cannot be reaped from the same market with more money perhaps. Plan smartly and plan with some vision.
But for all of these to really happen, bschools will have to restructure themselves, think of raising the average intelligence quotient of students every year, and then looking at creating systems that will sustain development. I have personal doubts about 70% of the institutes i know of who cannot think of meeting ends (of getting the number of seats filled and then getting the money in through fees). Is there hope? I really dont know.
I had enough interactions with the media (all forms of media, for the record) during these times wherein we were planning to go ahead with the admissions season activities. Since, most activities are related to BTL things that a bschool can do to optimize cost and probably reach out to maximum number of candidates, there was money that we needed to spend carefully.
During these interactions and the subsequent plans that many of the top media houses in India provided me with, I realized that the best way lose money in that domain was to listen to these top-notch newspapers and the special things that they do for you.
Some came with readership data, while others with special editions. They were there to make money and the best "bakra" that they found were bschools who let these people feel that education industry in the next best industry to spend good amount of money on Ads. When you show the carrot and dont have any knowledge of how to use it, the donkeys will have a gala time. And thats exactly what I figured out in the next 6 months time of my tenure.
Special editions are the worst possible things that can happen for anyone who is putting in money in newspaper ads. Special ads mean - there will be too many similar ads from BSchools across the geography (taking advantage of some discount) leading to 'Ad-Blindness' that kills the entire plan right away. So what do you do when you dont get response? You feel 'Oh, I guess another impression is required'. You go ahead with repeating the same mistake again and again.
Newspapers were never able to develop anything worthwhile for Educational institutions. It is not a medium that will give you anything. It has been losing sheen for quite sometime now, and the fact that there are certain institutions who spend crores to get Full Page Ads in TOI goes to show that credibility can be bought by those who have the money to do so. As an upcoming Bschool, you dont have the option to compete with those institutes.
Another way that bschools lose money is by participating in God-Foresaken educational exhibitions which are conducted in such a lousy fashion that the best thing one can expect out of these fairs are good lunch and picnic like travel and stay of the bschool representatives.
No event in India has been conducted with some thought. It is like book a space, throw in all sorts of institutes (bschools, finishing schools, modelling schools, lingerie making schools, etc.) and consultants (study abroad, study in India, etc.), throw in all kinds of students (10th standard students asking about MBA) and let everyone decide what they want to do. I know of institutes who "do not have any other choice" but to participate in these hillarious 'melas' in order to get some result. Invariably, everyone always complains about how things did not work. Every BSchool Diro tells the admission team that 'Ek bachcha le karke aana" then they break even for participating the event.
The problem of losing money and losing their minds is primarily because of the shortsightedness of these bschools. Neither they have the professional talent to think through winning strategies and implement the best ATL/BTL activities to get results, nor do they ever think of "zero-based" marketing plans. The best that they do is to plan according to the experience they had from some location last year. It takes a half-brainer to understand that things are dynamic and that the same results cannot be reaped from the same market with more money perhaps. Plan smartly and plan with some vision.
But for all of these to really happen, bschools will have to restructure themselves, think of raising the average intelligence quotient of students every year, and then looking at creating systems that will sustain development. I have personal doubts about 70% of the institutes i know of who cannot think of meeting ends (of getting the number of seats filled and then getting the money in through fees). Is there hope? I really dont know.
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