History of Management Education in India

If we look at the Management education or business Education in India, it has been proliferating at a very high rate. India trains more than 100,000 degrees annually in Management education. The liberalisation of Indian education during 1990’s has been responsible for this growth.

In India, we can trace Business education way back to the 19^th century. British government administration needs were fulfilled by this education to some extent. The graduates joined as clerks in the British administration.

In Chennai in 1903 was set up the India’s first business school – commercial school of pachiappa charities. In 1913, Sydenham College in Mumbai was the first college level business school to be founded. This was followed by Shri Ram College of commerce in Delhi in 1920.

If we look at the Indian Business schools, most of them have followed the US type of systems in terms of pedagogy, curriculum and interfacing with industry.

In the initial years of business education, it was not popular. All bright students were expected to join science stream and take engineering at the IIT’s or other technical institutes. Afterwards they joined companies as technical supervisors and then moved up to take up managerial positions.

During 1980’s business education got increased importance. One of the reasons was the difficulty in getting admission into science stream as the demand was more than available seats in science stream. Students started joining management stream.  Companies also increased hiring commerce graduates at junior executive level and developing them for executive posts.

Commerce stream was being looked as an alternative for becoming an executive in the corporate world. Commerce education aim was to develop knowledge of business transactions from economics and accounting angle.  Management education aims to develop knowledge about overall business and also its different functions. It was focused on graduate levels and help in developing future leaders.

In 1961 two IIM’s were launched.  IIM Calcutta with collaboration from Sloan school of Management at MIT  and  IIM Ahmadabad started with Harvard business school help.

With respect to quality, only the top B-schools are giving quality education.  The rest of the schools require to increase their quality level to ensure the students become more ready for corporate world.

 During 1990’s growth in the number of business schools occurred and also management education received lot of status.  Many of the big private companies started recruiting business graduates for the management jobs.

Some of  the skills which business  graduates  were expected to have  were  good accounting skills and also operational management skills, marketing skills,  good oral and written communications , critical  thinking and as well team working skills.   And also knowledge of information technology is required for leveraging its power in the business arena.

The teaching pedagogy has been undergoing constant changes in the Management education to suit the above requirements.

In addition to MBA programmes   many universities started BBA programmes and these have become popular.  BBA programmes are being preferred to traditional commerce programmes.

As management institutes started growing, in 1973 two more IIM’s were started one in Bangalore and another in Lucknow. During late 1990’s two more were added to the list of  IIM’s  one at Calicut and another at  Indore. Opening of more IIM’s helped in developing management education across  the country.

ICFAI  set up in 1994  ICFAI  Business school and it has branches  in all the major cities of India. It teaches MBA in different programs and it uses industry people for teaching.

IGNOU also helped in the spread of  business education in India by making it affordable to the common masses. It’s open learning programmes has become successful. It also has launched Gyan Darshan a TV channel to deliver the business course content  across India.

Some of the metrics used by business schools for measuring quality are: students quality, placement,  faculty development and teaching pedagogy.

Getting admission to one of the premium business schools is considered to help students in their growth. Common admission tests are conducted by IIM’s for admission into their schools. Other business institutes also use the CAT score for their admission process.

The Business schools get students from a variety of background like engineering, commerce, medicine, science and liberal arts. This helps in the diversity and a good classroom experience. Business schools are continuously upgrading the skills they are imparting to make it more relevant to the industry requirements.

The quality of management education is also influenced by the pedagogy used by the business schools. An efficient pedagogy can facilitate an effective learning in the class. In most business schools it is mandatory to do 2 months summer internship in a business organisation which helps in honing the skills of the students. The challenge in business education is to ensure quality in all the  business  schools  particularly tier 2 and tier 3 not just tier 1.

 References

1)   Vipin Gupta and Kamala Gollakata, “Quality in Business education: A study of the Indian context . “  Paper prepared for and presented at the Business Education and Emerging Market Economies: Trends and Prospects Conference, Technology Square, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, November 7, 2003

2)      Arun Kumar Kaushik   and Jagbir Singh Dalal “Management Education in India Research Paper”  2011.  Uttarakhand Technical University

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