Indira Nooyi completed her MBA from IIM & went to the US for pursuing another MBA degree from Yale University . She reached the peak of her career to become a global CEO & Chairperson of Pepsico International . MBA was the ladder which helped her to get into the right spot from the beginning of her career . The knowledge , skills & attitudes she developed during her MBA helped her to lead the mega-corporation . There are many other examples of how MBA helped professionals to reach where they are today , in different parts of the world . They have leveraged MBA to their advantage .
Today , the scenario is different . MBA is losing its sheen . Why ? What is MBA exactly ? Who should do it ? When to do it ? What is the role of Business Schools ? What is expected from students ? What are the different models of MBA education ? How do you choose a good B School ?
This article is my effort to enlighten the readers using my 30 years of learning , practicing , teaching , coaching , advising and writing management experience .
Companies don ' t want sculptures of talent ; they want to see the talent in action . Today the keyword is performance . Companies have been dropping the entrylevel packages and creating room for freshers to grow . Gone are the days when companies paid on the basis of professional degrees . In my career , I was keen to share my degree certificates with my seniors but they hardly bothered for it . Those paper degrees remained just due diligence for the systems requirement . What mattered was my approach to work , performance , discipline and hard work . My employers in the past and clients today have been paying me for what I do rather than what I could do for them based on my degrees .
Companies hardly care about the degrees printed on paper . They want to see degrees imbibed in the personalities . It should reflect in their work , attitude and performance . MBA remains an entry ticket , the rest depends on how we play the match . That explains the success of non-MBAs in the corporate sector . Once on the job , seniors hardly bother about your MBA . The MBA degree matters to them only if it is leveraged to achieve organizational objectives and mission . Failure to do so would make the degree null and void .
What Has Changed ?
The job of B Schools is to make students employable . They can support students to get the right placement but can ' t guarantee the same . Students have to do their part well . The onus of getting the right placement is with the student and not with the B School . Students have to actively participate in academics , club work , internships , case study discussions , debates , peer learning , reading management books , magazines and business papers . In the absence of many of these activities , the B School becomes an employment agency .
B Schools are becoming placement agencies . Students worry about placements more than academics , right from day one .
Companies hardly care about the degrees printed on paper . They want to see degrees imbibed in the personalities . It should reflect in their work , attitude and performance . MBA remains an entry ticket , the rest depends on how we play the match . That explains the success of non-MBAs in the corporate sector . Once on the job , seniors hardly bother about your MBA . The MBA degree matters to them only if it is leveraged to achieve organizational objectives and mission .
B School is the avenue where companies meet their potential employees . B schools can only take the horse to the water ; it can ' t make it drink the water . Companies want to optimize their time by reducing the longevity and fatigue in the process of recruitment and selection . The more the filters and shortlisting , the more the fatigue for the employer . Such fatigue might result in a fatigue failure in terms of recruitment errors .
Going to the right B School for campus recruitment reduces the chances of fatigue failures though it can ' t guarantee the recruitment accuracy because every B School has A , B & C category students . The success rate depends on various factors like whether the company goes during the early phase of the campus recruitment drive , the industries of interest for students , the elimination process used , etc . Some companies smartly use internship programs to identify the right candidates and make ' pre-placement offer ' to deserving students by observing them on work during their two-three-monthlong internship .
Models Of MBA Education
I have seen different models of MBA education . It will help to select the right B School by knowing which management education model it uses and which model suits the student . The various models are as follows :
The Indian Model
In India students and families want to pursue back-to-back MBA degree after their undergraduate . They feel it is impossible to focus on studies once you start earning money and also in the later part of life . Indians prefer to pursue an MBA when they are in the age group of 21 to 23 . This model has relative advantages and limitations as well . The advantage is that the person can start earning early and set up his family well in time . The only exposure to the industry is internships . This trend is changing these days and some students work for a year or two before they go to a B School . But the primary reason for this is to buy time to prepare for the MBA entrance exams .
In India , most of the MBA admissions are written test dominant , hence students prefer to prepare for them alongside their academics . Most of them give-up their
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