PAGE 14 DY NAMISM( E)
# ISMEianWrites
Dr. Shampa Nandi,
Dr. Shyam Prasad
Internal Marketing – An Essential Condition for Improving the Quality of Indian Higher Education?
Education in India started at 3 rd century B. C, mostly focussed on religious education and imparting knowledge orally. Education was free, but normally well off students used to donate some“ Gurudakshina” to their gurus as a token of respect and appreciation. In the medieval period, Indian higher education system was flourished with renowned universities like Nalanda, Takshila, Ujjain & Vikramshila universities where students across globe used to visit. Teachers or Gurus, with high level of intrinsic motivation were highly respected in society and teaching profession was a high esteemed selfless profession. About one and half century ago the modern university system started in India with the establishment of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and some other universities between 1857 to 1902, modelled after British universities. As of 2014, there are 677 universities, 37,204 colleges and 11443 stand-alone institutions in India. According to Kapil Sibbal, ex-union HRD minister India needs 800 new universities to be established by 2020 to meet the massive demand of India because of its aspiration of emerging as a global knowledge hub. But at the same time several recent studies have revealed that overall condition and quality of Indian higher education is dismal and except one or two, none of the Indian universities features among top two hundred in global ranking. Automatically question arises where exactly Indian higher education went wrong?
Education sector demands very high level of personal contacts and quality of educational sector is highly dependent on the contribution of the teachers. In educational institutions students are considered as primary customers and again they are reshaped into final products to be sold in the job market. Therefore the role of teachers in higher education are very challenging. Teachers in higher education should consider teaching and research in a complementary way. Special emphasis should be given on assessment orientation teaching and research. Involvement of the teachers in higher education institutions also play an important role in achieving success of the institute. Again he would be able to secure and retain the coveted place only by fulfilling the needs of his students. In order to accomplish all of these, he has to find satisfaction in his work( Rao, 2004). Education sector definitely need much spending in internal motivation. With passage of time teaching has evolved as any other profession and organisations play a large role in motivating the teaching professionals. Consequently“ Internal Marketing” comes in the picture of Higher education sector.
Internal marketing seems easy to understand but mostly forgettable by the companies as they are more focused towards external marketing and creating a brand. In an institute where exactly does it fit, in HR, Strategic plan or in Marketing? In a simple term“ Internal Marketing” is the application of all theories and practices of marketing to the firm’ s employees so that best people are employed and retained by the organisation and ultimately they provide quality services to the customers.
Success of any service organisation is dependent on the firm’ s ability to create competitive advantage. Service employees are critical as they provide performances( Lovelock, 1983). Jan Carlzon( 1987) of Scandinavian Airlines was one of the first who referred the employees serving customers as“ moments of truth” as they are primarily responsible to create and maintain lifetime relationships with customers. According to Chase( 1978) in case of high contact services like, banks, health care, restaurant the quality of services are inseparable from the quality of service provider. Employees at contact points virtually shape the service outcome and hence become an essential part of product. Education is of course a perfect example of high contact service where teachers play an important role in service outcome. Internal Marketing has become a centralised theme of importance among academicians and service organisations.