B-schools

 After six decades of India’s independence, our B-schools follow the United States as a model for business education. This blind aping of the US is, in fact, a bane for our education. This is valid in spite of the fact that our IIMs – Ahmadabad and Calcutta in particular – were assisted by the leading business schools of the United States during their initial days. Our B-schools continue to recommend American books as there is a dearth of good Indian books written by our authors. 

The revered world of management studies seems to be all set to lose its sheen, thanks to a recent trend among the management schools. It is ‘buying’ of students. This new development has already experts worried. They predict that merit will soon become secondary in the scheme of these B-schools. All that matters at the time of admissions is money. 

With a view to streamline its executive education programmes in India, the US-headquartered Harvard Business School (HBS) plans to have its own classroom in the country. In its endeavour, Harvard is getting enviable assistance from Indian corporate giants, Ratan Tata and Anand Mahindra. The HBS has been conducting executive education or management development programmes (MDPs) in five-star hotels. The same practice was being followed from 2008.

IT firms are back with a bang in the country’s top engineering and B-School campuses to get the best of brains. Management students too seem to have shrugged off their recession-rooted aversion to the IT-based jobs. They are all ready to harvest their effort and thankfully the salary packages offered by the IT majors are of mind-blowing proportions.

A recent survey by Neilson Group has brought to light the fact that over 74 percent students in business schools across the nation feel that they were hit yet again by the global financial meltdown as placements took a beating this year too.

Arpit Jaiswal has preferred to join the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad despite having an option to get into the Stanford University. A BTech (honours) graduate from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, Arpit took everybody by surprise by his unconventional decision, including his batch mates at IIM-A. 

 Through new courses, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) is striving to make its students aware of the ongoing recession.