Decision Making inside Private Universities in India

In some my most recent meetings, I have had the privilege of coordinating with the top guys at private Universities in the country, and I am on the verge of losing all kinds of respect that I had for this fraternity.

Let me base this entire thing on a particular premise - all that I will mention here has nothing to do with anyone personally, and it involves data trends during my course of interactions with these gentlemen and ladies.

1. They lack either the IQ or the courage to make change happen:
Since I am in sales, this is something I have found baffling at most times. These are the very people who are running our educational institutions and are supposed to teach students about how to make the next set of things happen. Surprisingly, these are the very people who are so very grounded to their comfort zones, or they don't have the IQ to understand how things have evolved, that anything thats NEW doesn't really get through the smokescreen.

I figure that no one would want to take the pain and the responsibility to be the "change-agent" primarily because of the kind of politics thats rampant inside such institutions. These political centers will take the lives and careers of such proactive-leaders downhill - such is the thought.

Then there are questions like - Whats in it for me (personally? I really hate to answer that question because the next set of discussions will vary on how much payout am I ready to offer for this decision going my way.

Pushing the buck (and pushing me around) across to other people (Read - ProVC, VC, Director, Finance Director, MCA Professor, MBA Professor, Pro-Chancellor, Chancellor) is an endless process wherein external travel, absence, etc are a regular part of this thing. Why should there every be urgency in order to do something that no one else has done?

2. They are pretty terrible in returning any communication
This happens in almost every case, and exceptions are a welcome sign actually. Simple things like returning calls, mails, or faxes are never done because they probably don't have time. Don't have time? For what? In most cases, I have had meetings with these guys when I was taken by the other person inside the department and we simply waltzed-into the office of a senior guy. They don't reply because of the first point I made - they choose not to reply actually.

They are aware that every reply they make, they will have be asked for an action on the plan or the proposal.

I once asked one person that - Simply put, will you view an ISO9001.2000 certification proposal the same way as you would for a proposal for improving the quality of candidates applying to you, or the quality of placements you are going to have?

He told me that, for a quality certification, he can "show-off" that "he" got that. But for anything on the other side like Admission, he will not be able to claim that it was due to his efforts that things are better in applications or placements. There are different people taking such claims-to-fame. So why should he be bothered?

Now if he is not bothered, then why should be be the bottleneck in the process? Quite simple - To be viewed as IMPORTANT.

I have a very sad feedback about the kind of conversations that I have with most of the top guys I meet across India - none of those (conversations) are really interesting. I don't know if I have learnt anything from any of them, or shared our knowledge on the ways of improvement of their University or Institution.

(Just a practical joke - I met this Director in Mumbai, and somehow, our discussion went onto when should I have kids now that I am married, and he ended up speaking on that for the next 45 mins. I was pulling my hair after the meeting, and am really scared to meet him again. However, on a separate note - the Deal was Done)

Decision making inside Universities involves a very complex mesh or matrix, and its a hard job to convert each of those guys. If they don't have vision or IQ or are scared, that compounds the problems. No one wants to mess around with the other person's ego or sour any relationship. In this status-quo situation, things go on and on as usual.

The good thing is that all this has been identified, and the next step is to break into the "chakravyuh".

A possible loss for GMAT

When I was thinking about all the chaos that has happened post the CAT (common admission test) 2010 results, I was wondering who would benefit from such a situation.

The Bschools are clueless as are the students, and the coaching classes are shivering at the thought of what 'rabbit' is going to come out of the CAT magic-hat.

One things that struck me was the opportunity that this chaos presents to other similar testing service like the GMAC who conduct GMAT. For the first time in the history of bschool admissions in India, there is this opportunity to propound the GMAT test to business schools, and Universities who would probably (proactively) look at this test providing them with quality applicants. This is predicated on the argument that amongst the 2000 odd business schools of MBA institutions, atleast 50-60 top ones are no longer bothered about the number of applications sold and application-form-revenues. Also, there would have been opportunities for students from other countries (maybe neighbours as well) to study in the programs offered by our bschools.

Another fact is that the majority of students actually intend to get into these business schools (top50-60) anyways. So end of the day, there wasn't going to be any issue with application numbers or revenue.

GMAT is expensive, but for students who take the CAT seriously and are now at the peril of losing their faith in themselves, GMAT would be the savior.

So for one very brief moment, the stage was all set for the GMAC authorities to approach the best institutions in India and then build up the system for the admission process of these bschools.

Trouble came in the form of a sudden change in AICTE guidelines or regulations. It was such a sudden thing, that even bschools have been taken by surprise. The new guidelines on admission process from AICTE stated that there would now be only CAT and MAT test scores available to Institutions who would come under the purview of AICTE. To make matters worse, there is a highly debated clause mentioning that admission process involving GD and PI will now be conducted by state regulated bodies (like the DTE in Maharashtra) for all colleges in that state offering PGDBM.

This took away any chances for bschools signing up for any other test (other than CAT) like GMAT, and also took away the admission process from them. It is to be noted here that last year (after the CAT debacle), institutions like Great Lakes conducted their own test. Same happened for quite many of them.

This whole rush to save the face of India's most famous entrance test today (yes, its the CAT), is difficult to fathom. Why should such mindless regulations be brought in to save something that needs to find answers from within? Why should the scope of top-grading the admission process and the intake being stymied by regulations and steps like these?

The license-raj isn't dead. it exists and the sad part is it is hurting the growth of higher education in India. I am not aware of any such regulation in US or UK against whom we feel our systems should be compared and developed.

Yes, it is a loss for GMAT, but thats not the point. This entire episode has shown the world that regulatory bodies can actually become real-time bottlenecks in the growth story in any sector in India. All that is left for the hapless bschools is probably the "jugaad".

My analysis of CAT2010 - beyond their explanations

CAT 2009 was a nightmare in terms of how it was administered and everything that people experienced while taking up the test (server crashes, re-taking the test, etc.).

While everyone anticipated the changes in CAT2010, the team of IIM-Prometric-Meritrac-Everonn combined did a better job at administering the test.

When I thought all was fine, came the troubles with results. Not only is there widespread chaos (wherein people who were scoring in the higher percentiles in their mock-CAT got damning final scores), there is also the 'explanation' (the official one) to all these that has got my bowels moving.

I am not going to explain all the pain and hardships people go through to prepare for this very test, and all the heartbreaks that are caused when results are announced that are way beyond anyone's nightmares. I am not sure if I have ever heard of suicides post CAT results, but I guess that may change too.

My point is very simple. According to my understanding and expertise of test design, all thats explained as reasons to how a person got his or her percentile is shocking. I almost couldn't believe what I read and the more I dug into the statistics and concepts that they have used, the more terrible it became to understand what really went on in the name of this test this year.

Lets demystify:

Any scientific test (the Final test - like CAT 2010), when designed, involves a huge amount of pre-test work that involves -
Raw Test design -> Administering the test on a carefully selected Sample (related to the final test takers) -> Get Raw scores -> Use statistical tools (may include Item Response Theory or "IRT") to determine Item weight/Item characteristic score/etc -> Normalization of the scores -> Create an error-free "Final Test"

This way, certain things are taken care of, like -
a) the distribution of the difficulty levels in every question paper that may be unique from the other set
b) a proper test paper set wherein one person taking Test 1 would probably be scoring in the same percentile if he takes Test 2.
c) final scores, percentiles, etc.

What I understand from reading the official statements mentioning the process is:
- They have done the process upside-down
Beginning from: Final Test -> Raw score -> IRT -> Normalization -> Percentiles and percentages

Therefore the premise seems to be flawed.

The content on IRT and Rasch Model of conducting Psychometry analysis and developing test is available on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Item_response_theory; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasch_model

If you read carefully, each of these are used for developing the Final tests, and not developing results.

So, what was CAT 2010? Was it a data gathering exercise for CAT 2011? Is it worth giving One year in one's career to face such a situation wherein there are now doubts on whether the whole psychometry and normalization process was mindless banter to cover up for a shoddy process?

Who will answer these questions? Some answers like "questioning the psychometry is like questioning maths" etc show the disdainful attitude to get things right. My heart pains for those aspirants who believe in this system and may today believe that they are really not good enough.

I am open for a debate on this. We can probably get the best guys from GMAT or GRE teams to talk on this on a open forum and tell everyone whats the actual process.

Filing RTI will never let us know if the process followed was right or wrong. We need global experts to make a point here. Else, the whole attitude of "we are the best in India and we can get away with anything and everything" will soon doom our management education system.

Worth a look: Some Up-coming Universities for MBA

I have been very critical in my judgements recently about how MBA education in this country has largely become a business which is ruining the possibilities of young talent availability for the corporate world. Additionally, I am sure that a vast majority of the institutes present today in some form or the other are bound to close down if certain important and parallel trends are to be considered.

In the midst of all these, I have been closely following certain Universities for sometime now and it is actually great to see that some of these Universities are actually taking great strides in getting the neccessary internal processes in place to support the MBA program as it should be. They may not have an excellent past record (as some of them are new Universities) but with their current ways of work, they will probably find themselves as leading national brands in the next 2-3 years.

Some of the names that I am mentioning below are based on my understanding of how Universities may probably change the way management education is viewed in India and bring back the rigour and excellent back in the system.

The ones that have future potential and could be excellent places to study in the future are: (not in any order)
1. VIT Vellore - Institute of Business Studies
2. Amrita University
3. Saastra University
4. Karpagam University
5. Prist University
6. Vinayaka Missions University - MBA
7. Veltech University

I have had close interactions with their Deans, faculty, and the administration to understand the ways they would want to go ahead with their programs and the ways they feel MBA should be taught in India. The answers have been commendable and thats really a good thing. It gives me, after my stint of understanding the filth in the system, a feeling of calmness that all is not lost and there will always be Universities and Business Schools like these who will take on responsibility and do the good work.

12 Things that Indian Business Schools will have to Stop Talking about

In the last decade, there are quite many things that B-schools in India have showcased to lure/attract students into their programs. Due to the excessive usage of these so called "Unique Selling proposition" or at times the "Unique factors" by almost every b-school, these terms have now become irrelevant and are not associated with the way aspirants choose their Business school or programs.

The following things will probably be done away with:

1. Approvals - of the program (mostly AICTE). This no longer has any significance as the majority of the ones with the approvals are the ones sulking and possible are the worst examples of how a b-school shouldn't be.

2. AC Campus - How does it matter?

3. Well Stocked Library - Isn't this the bare minimum of a good MBA/PG program?

4. Free Laptop - Sounds like some Free Lunch being distributed at some temple and therefore will attract people to join. Heck! Why would someone who is paying Rs.5,00,000 as a course fee and additional expenses along with that have pains to buy a laptop worth Rs.25,000? And more so, how can this be a salient feature of a program?

5. Placement (100%) - A closer look with say how much of this is true. Some in the industry speak of horrific stories of how HR departments are paid money by a bschool to get the student an offer for 3 months and then probably chuck him out. If this is true, then thats a big scandal in itself. The important question is - Do I want to join an Educational institute or a Placement Agency to find me a job?

6. Additional Program of SAP - This is actually laughable stock. I mean, there are so many credits available for students in some of the best institutes that something like this is hillarious.

7. Hostel Facility - Why does anyone have to mention this as one of the key features?

8. Visiting Faculty from XYZ Institutes - Which means that full-time faculty strength is low or absent and therefore academic rigour is absent. visiting faculty is always a way of saving cost for any b-school.

9. Hygenic Canteen - As if food in other campuses kill aspirants.

10. Wi-fi Campus - If I belong to the 1990s and have slept after that to be woken up to do an MBA, I may say "wow" to that. People who understand the way technology has evolved and the requirements to be provided to MBA students, they will find this mention amusing.

11. Scholarships - At the counseling stage, this becomes "Discount". Education becomes some kind of bargainable commodity. This factor has been overused and aspirants have no respect for something like this anymore, therefore this too is avoidable in communications to aspirants.

12. International Curriculum - Some even go the distance of saying that their curriculum reflects those of Harvard's or Wharton's. For the unknown, this might be an attraction, but for the larger section of aspirants who are aware of facts and do their research, this is a LIE. You cannot ever replicate the curriculum of those Universities because the kind of credits available and the amount of teaching hours and number of Professors teaching there is not possible to be replicated by even some of the best in India.

If B-schools avoid these and get into properly identifying themselves with the aspirants, it will be better for the bschools in every possible way. The question is - do they have anything substantial to talk about if they choose to omit these from their Advertisements?

[Fiction] - The conspiracy theory behind 2nd rung B-schools failing in India

Story:
Some years back, when management education was just accepted as the most important thing to happen for India and people started participating in entrance tests with a lot of interest, there was a growth story that tickled many educators to start their own management schools and programs.

The biggest and the best names were definitely the IIMs (at that time, there were only 5 of them). Therefore most of the new business schools replicated what worked for the IIM.: curriculum, project work, case studies, etc. Some even went to the extent of creating illusionary cut-offs so that they are perceived in the same league as the best institutions.

What did this mean?
Ans: This meant the following:
1. If the IIM was charging a fee of Rs.4,00,000 for the entire program, these bschools too charged same or a bit less to maintain parity
2. If the IIM was showing certain trends in placements, these bschools too tried to get similar companies for their own placements.
3. If IIM was saying that an X-factor is important in the GD-PI or industry interaction was done in a "Y" way, then these bschools also tried to do the same.

So what transpired is that for every move the IIM made, there were about 1000 business schools who followed the same and talked the same language. Everyone talked about infrastructure in hostels, classrooms, library, industry interaction (Heck ! some even got themselves ranked as the ones who are the best in Industry interaction), PLACEMENTS, etc.

Anyone with a little analysis and common sense would now understand that whatever the IIM did, these bschools were certain to replicate that.

Things like these (replication i.e.) work for sometime and it did for a lot of these bschools.

Now, all of a sudden, the IIMs raised their tuition fee to about Rs.8-9 lakhs. This was interpreted by the other bschools as  - "Students will now feel that with lesser fee, our bschools are providing lesser quality education. So let us increase our fee as well."

And they did!

The point missed by them was - the parity between the fee paid and the placement achieved along with the brand-value of an IIM is unbeatable and that IIMs will always have that leverage in the mindshare of aspirants.

They will never get there because they didnt have the number of years as a proof of quality educator and they also dont have the intellectual property that an IIM commands. We should also remember here that the IIM is a body thats supported by the Ministry of HRD itself.

Add to the this entire situation the current trend of aspirants profiling wherein about 60% of the entrance test takers are with prior work experience. these are people who are wary about the ROI equation and brand leveraging in their careers.

Almost every other business school has increased its tuition fee and therefore cannot back-track and work out any reduction in prices in the coming years. Which means that they now face a challenge of answering very tough questions -
Q1. Are they in the same league as of the IIMs with similar fee structures? So is it worth going for them vis-a-vis the IIMs who are now coming up with new branches? (they already have 6 campuses).
Q2. Given that placement figures from these other b-schools cannot provide anything similar to the IIMs, how will they ever explain the ROI of investing so much money as fees?
Q3. Most of the 2nd rung b-schools are run on leased premises and have high advertising costs and operations expenses. How will they manage the mathematics of survival given that admission rates will drop?

As of now, the future game looks like this:
-> IIMs and some other top-Business schools will open multiple campuses across India.
-> Their intakes will increase - it is a trend already and they can support such intakes with their infrastructure and Govt backing.
-> Placements will continue to be good at the IIMs due to their brand equity and also due to their Alumni base in India Inc.
-> IIMs will probably set the work-experience barrier and convince India Inc about the advantages of the same. This will lead to further narrowing down chances of survival of other 2nd rung business schools.

What does this mean for 2nd Rung Business Schools?
- End of the way: they will not be able to survive if IIMs increase their capacities and campuses and provide more choices to the students.
- These institutes may then get into super-specialized programs providing inexpensive solutions to certain domains.

It seems unlikely that the best minds in the IIMs were not aware of the trends that would happen after every action of theirs. They knew that every action they would have taken, things would have changed in the domain. And it really did. Thats the power of controlling the mindshare of lakhs of aspirants in India.

How can over 1500 Bschools in India Shutdown in 2 years

Yes. It is highly possible.

Imagine this:
There are over 2217 B-schools which comprises of about 1817 AICTE approved institutions and 400 un-approved private b-schools.
Together, they have over 1,99,000 seats for about 2,50,000 CAT Takers (if we consider CAT 2008 or CAT 2009).
If we hypothetically consider that Average fees charged by these bschools is Rs.2,00,000 for the program, then the total potential revenue for B-schools in India = Rs.3,990 Crores.

As there are less seats than the total supply of students, there should be no worries for these b-schools to get the required number of students for their batches to begin, right?

WRONG. Every year, from the last 2-3 years, more b-schools are finding it difficult to fill their batches when they begin in the month of June every year.

I am not talking about the Top-50 b-schools here. They have enough pull effect to attract excellent numbers and thereby have the privilege of even providing a waiting-list for candidates.

The worry is with the second and third category of b-schools. Most of them are run privately and are not funded. They were probably set-up with the right intentions to provide Management education to students in India who could not get through to the best b-schools due to some or the other reason. Some were also set up to provide education to a special section of the society.

However, Death looms large on these bschools. Primary reason is that they have never figured out the changing dynamics of the market and also the way aspirants choose bschools in the past few years.

Take so data for example - in the year 2003, out of the 95000 students who took CAT, the percentage of freshers was 60% and 40% were with work exp. Cut to 2009 CAT - 2,50,000 takers and 40% freshers with 60% work-ex junta.

We will all probably agree that in 2003, freshers chose higher education due to the fact that economy then promised them something really big if they were out in the next two years in the market. People who were working were already happy and never bothered much then with a 2 yr full time program. Filling seats for bschools therefore was never an issue.

Seeing these trends in 2003, many bschools mushroomed since then.

In the last couple of years, things have been really bad for most of these b-schools. They have found it tough to fill their batches with quality candidates. They have found that responses to their communication messages through marketing and branding are appalling. Overall, things have looked very bad.

A deeper look into the trends will give us a better idea - since there has been about 60% of the total CAT takers who had prior work-ex, we can safely assume that these people will not settle for a b-schools thats not in the top 50. This is due to the fact that they are very sure of the time they will spend (2 years) and also the return on investment that they will realize after the 2 yr period.

This means that 60% of the crowd now doesnt consider the remaining 2000 odd institutes as the ones they will want to join for this year. Thats a huge blow.

The freshers are always the confused lot. If they get into a top50 bschool, they will take that immediately. If not, then they look out for the best options (mostly understanding what kind of placements are available with other bschools). This means a very slow decision process. With bschools who would have generated leads from websites or other sources, most of these freshers will be called atleast 30 times for following up if they have made any decision. That produces frustrations on both ends. Aspirants feel that  - this college doesnt get applications and are therefore following up. For them it doesnt mean anything that the bschool is looking for genuine candidates to apply to them.

Which means that the spending on Print media (almost 20% of the total revenue) and other spending (like seminars, education fair) is now giving almost no result whatsoever.

If this is the trend, very soon these bschools will have to shutdown. Already, they have optimized in operational expenditures through - visiting faculty, class schedules, etc. They have already stretched it too thin. If they dont take the right steps right now, then they will surely be heading for a sad end. There is still hope. These bschools will need to look inward and ask themselves some very important questions:
1. What is lacking in us that we dont have the pull effect like others?
2. What are the right things that bschools like Glakes, ISB, etc have done that they are doing good today?
3. Do I have a Marketing+Admission team that has more people than my Full-time faculty members?
4. Whats my status in connection to important parameters on which the best forums dissect bschools on? (In most cases its not tables/chairs/food/computers/hostels/etc).
5. How will I reorganize the entire spending pattern for my bschool so that I make the right decisions in branding and consciously move into the Top Bracket?

I have answers to all the above questions. the trouble is that with the kind of sweatshop way of working that these bschools have, it is difficult to make them see the light. However, extinction is a big threat and I guess it will have them thinking on this. It is high time that these bschools make the right decisions.