Executive Summary

MBA education system needs revamp - do away with specialization and structure it as a one year course for students with work experience.

The existing MBA curriculum tends to compartmentalize learning into distinct divisions like marketing, finance, HR, operations or strategy, which is antagonistic to real life business situations. Real life business problems don't appear in such distinct categories but appear as interplay of various disciplines having implications cutting across these functions. Moreover, the current system of bifurcation of management courses into trimester/semester give the students a piecemeal picture of the whole management practices and they fail to see the linkages among various courses taught. Thus it never crosses in an average student's mind that pricing methodology learnt in marketing management can be linked to microeconomics to determine appropriate mark-up price or productivity improvement measures learnt in operations management can be linked to organization structure learnt in organization behavior or business strategy learnt in strategic management. The 'big picture' or the macro view gets lost somewhere in the mélange of so many functional silos and student fails to develop a holistic view.

This shortcoming can be taken care of by having one year MBA structured as intermix of basic courses in finance, marketing, systems, operations, HR & OB.

The whole course should be structured as one continuous year of learning rather than broken into semester/trimester, which is a piecemeal approach and takes away the continuity in learning. The cases discussed should involve synthesis of ideas and concepts from all the above-mentioned disciplines, which can give students a feel for integrative thinking.

I reiterate MBA should be only one-year course as this makes the learning more effective (fast paced environment spurs on students to perform) and also is a better value proposition for people who have left jobs to pursue academics. The students admitted must be high achievers (to be able to cope up with the work load) having minimum 3 yrs of work experience (one doesn't get to do anything concrete in first 1 or 2 yrs in an organization) so as to be able to relate the theoretical perspectives with experiential learning.

MBA is an 'action' course rather than a passive one. You can't teach a person to swim by imparting him wisdom in the classroom. But if the person has gotten himself wet a few times in the swimming pool and splayed his legs and hands, he will be able to relate and understand the swimming methods taught. Similarly a person with no work experience can't appreciate the theoretical underpinnings of the practical business situations, simply because he hasn't 'tested the water'.

The objective of MBA should be to impart intellectual versatility and rigor in thinking to the students rather than making a person specialist in one area (which he can always pick up later on in his career, depending on his interests and realistic judgment of his capability). The specialization system should be done away with, as leaders need to be 'generalists' with understanding of all aspects of business. Also it is difficult to pack specialization, which anyway doesn't make much sense, in one-year course.

Moreover, the curriculum should be peppered with readings in sociology, philosophy, economics and other humanities to provide depth in understanding and ability to think through a situation from different perspectives. Adequate stress must be laid on the personal development of the individual and to hone his soft skills like communication, leadership and negotiation skills by role plays, presentations, etc. The course should stress on moving from analysis to action; MBA, in fact, should become a byword for Managing Business Actions.

Such curriculum demands intellectual vigor and continuous peak effort on the part of the students to undergo this kind of fast paced learning. The moot question is - are Indian students ready to take the plunge? The answer seems to be yes as is proven by the success of ISB.

* Contributed by -
Lalit Kumar,
2nd yr. student,
IIM Kozhikode.