SMOT Blog

This question is particularly important in the current scenario - industry needs for management talent has diversified and changed while the format of management education has remained the same for years except for a few changes here and there and some changes in the courses.

Different management institutes project themselves as producing leaders, futuristic managers, global managers, entrepreneurs, ethical leaders and so on. The reality seems to differ quiet substantially from many of these objectives. 

Companies do not want students who are jack of all trades, who want to be CEO the moment they pass out MBA, students who are impatient in life, students who have not understood their own strengths and weaknesses, students who could not even figure out what kind of job they want and how well they would fit in after their MBA and students who have no knowledge to relate a price tag for themselves.

The other dimension is the plethora of entrance examinations. Many of them presuppose certain level of knowledge in mathematics even at the entry. It is no secret that management talent can be present in people with no knowledge in mathematics at all. Therefore, is there a way to create a level playing field where some basic common knowledge alone is tested without prejudice? And specific skills or knowledge required could be imparted either at core level or as additional course after joining the program.

SMOT will get students who will be right fit for the right job with right expectations.

Industry involvement in academia in India is almost nil. Industry has neither any knowledge of academics nor has any plans to even get to know what is happening out there except making a constant demand that the students coming out must be readily employable. What is the contribution they make to make the students employable is anybody’s guess. Academic institutions are competing among themselves now. This should change. Industry must compete to grab the attention of educational institutions. Industry Institutional interaction must happen at different levels. A. At faculty level, B. at student level. Enough has been said on these.At SMOT, we have allocated 25% of the courses to be handled by professionals from industry and we pay them sumptuously. Get them to teach, everything else will fall in place – projects, placements, curriculum update, professional approach and so on.

Employability is an essential requirement of a professional course. If the employability factor is not built in to the curriculum, then it is incomplete. There are courses which are for the sake of knowledge, for the sake of building other competencies, but not a professional course like MBA. An institute can have selection criteria to any level, but if the students are not prepared for the professional life, then it is incomplete. SMOT gives utmost importance to employability of its graduates by bringing in focus on what kind of job roll will fit a particular student and what kind of learning to be imparted to the student to achieve that objective. This is fundamental. In the absence of this, there is no point telling the world that we are creating leaders of future when the students do not even know which job they are best at.

Keeping superstructure as it is, just tweak the sub-structure to bring in the much needed focus of role specificity in to the curriculum is what SMOT calls re-engineered MBA. Developing such a curriculum seems to be quiet an involved exercise and delivering this curriculum to the desired quality will always be a challenge.

What is being offered to day stops with functional area specialization. This means, students specializing in marketing, for example, need not necessarily be a good brand manager or a business analyst. For one to become a good brand manager or a business analyst is left to the person to gain field experience and enabling this transition has become the responsibility of the company where he or she joins to mold. Close to 80% of the specific knowledge and skills required for a particular role / career track, is gained after MBA with very little input forthcoming as part of the curriculum. Going by the trend, even this seems to be far-fetched expectation, as most of the students passing out of the business schools do not even know what kind of career they look for and where they will best suit at. SMOT curriculum will largely achieve this very fundamental requirement. Students therefore will know what they are best at and therefore which career / role they will be most suitable for.