B-Schools increasingly loosing shine in India: Assocham

31 January, 2013

Barring graduates from IIM's, the B-schools are losing fast the shine of attracting India Inc. for campus recruitment and are increasingly facing tough time with respect to their survival. A study paper by industry body Assocham says that only 10% of the graduates are actually employable despite the robust demand for MBAs.

Assocham paper on “B-schools and Engineering colleges shut down- Big Business Struggles" reveals that since 2009, the recruitments at the campus have gone down by 40% in 2012, as a result the B-schools and engineering colleges are not able to attract students. More than 180 B-Schools have already closed down in 2012 in the major cities like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Lucknow and Dehradun etc. Another 160 are struggling for their survival.

D S Rawat, Secretary General Assocham said that there is no quality control, the placements are not commensurate with fees being charged, the faculty is not good enough and there is no infrastructure. “The biggest reason for the gap is the rapid mushrooming of tier-2 and tier-3 management education institutes that has unfortunately not been matched by commensurate uplift in the quality of management education. The most of students prefer to choose cheaper AICTE approved programs rather than B-schools”, said Mr. Rawat in a statement.

“The need to update and re-train faculty in emerging global business perspectives is practically absent in many B-schools, often making the course content redundant,” adds the paper. Mr. Rawat further said that the quality of higher education in India across disciplines is poor and does not meet the needs of the corporate world.

About 160 schools offering Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses are expected to close this year. Only 10% of graduates from Indian business schools excluding those from the top 20 schools get a job straight after completing their course, compared with 54% in 2008.

Some students expressed that the business schools promote their brands only on placement and by boasting about high salaries. They offer theoretical courses which lacks practical skills required by the corporate sector today, highlighted the paper.

In the last five years, the number of B-schools in India has tripled to about 4,500 amounting to as many as 3,60,000 MBA seats, collectively. The demand has begun to deflate now, as economy growth rate hit its slowest in the last nine years and the quality of education provided by B-schools came under the radar.

Assocham has advised these institutions to improve infrastructure, train their faculty, work on industry linkages, spend money on research and knowledge creation, as well as pay their faculty well in order to attract good teachers.