Do you see management education getting redefined?

It’s getting a backlash from the Western world. Most high-tech companies are not recruiting MBAs in the US. The Amazons or the Googles are saying that we would prefer hiring people who have a solid engineering background than management.

They’re looking at the value proposition of an MBA. In India, the MBA is on the upswing, but in the US, it’s downward. An MBA education is an entry point to the elite circle. In the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Harvard and Stanford used to dominate the recruitment cycles. With alternative modes and career options opening up, the MBA will be under pressure. It’ll not be business as usual.

So, we have to reinvent the MBA to receive the technological components within the curriculum; we have to see the climate change components. There is a churning within the very models of running business. That’ll impact what kind of education we need to impart.

So, the MBA is taking on a different orientation?

It is. The hybrid MBA is growing the fastest. The enchantment for a degree is diminishing in the younger generation. They want to get into the job market quickly and earn money. The long gestation of learning is a waste of time, according to many. So, it’s far more tactical. But to help them are a lot more opportunities with the education system itself becoming more fragmented and also catering to multiple exit and entry options; that trend has has begun to accelerate.

If I need to exit to start a company, or get a lucrative offer, why should I wait two whole years? So, patience is running out. That doesn’t make MBA any less lucrative. Right now, in India, we’re still getting 1:700 (selection vs applicants) kind of ratios. But it may not last that long. So, we need to reinvent not just the MBA, but the thinking behind it. How is it relevant to contemporary society? I see IIMs morphing very clearly into IIM universities. None of them will be offering a plain-vanilla MBA. For example, we’re starting our undergraduate programme in IIMK.

We are also starting a diploma programme, a sandwich between a degree and certificate. We are recapturing the spirit of the diploma programme. A professional class does not want a degree as a tag to enter the social circle. They want the diploma to be a functional requirement to be validated by their work experience.

So, a diploma will come back because skills are becoming very critical. IIMs offer not hard skills but cognitive capabilities. Unlike engineering colleges, we don’t offer hands-on learning. But cognitive capabilities can come by modular steps. You can do a diploma and then work, and you can come back again for an advanced kind of programme. So, this will allow us integration as a diploma, which will be counted towards a degree later on. Careers of tomorrow will not be planned anymore. They’ll be crafted. So, crafting and planning, the difference is planning is when you do a long-range programme while crafting means you take whatever is available, and then you build on it slowly.

Students will look at acquiring just a certain skill instead of a well-rounded programme?

Not necessarily. See, I’m saying it depends on who you are talking about. So those who want to do an MBA, don’t enter the job market. But if you’re sensitive to the cost of a two-year MBA, can I have a version that can test out my mettle a little bit? A diploma, which is, say, one-fourth or one-third of an MBA cost. You can get a flavour of an IIM experience and decide later on whether you want to do an MBA. So, they’re willing to take a portfolio of courses rather than just a two-year long-haul programme. It’s not a pass or perish kind of model.

We’re not mimicking the old PGDBM. We’ll offer just a diploma for those who want. It’ll be about ₹7.5 lakh as opposed to ₹20 lakh. It will be called diploma in management. There are a lot of people who would not want to pay because it is a price-sensitive thing.

Our unstated thumb rule is typically your first-year salary should be equivalent to your cost. When the price-point goes beyond that, the market begins to rethink. So you can create an alternate offer.

What is the undergrad degree you will be offering be in?

It’s still at the planning stage. The core will be in liberal education. They’ll have a solid learning in Math, in language. They can finish an MBA if they want to. They’ll probably be offered internships. And this is a cohort that’ll be far better equipped to deal with today’s problems because the university system is still struggling to connect academia and industry. Undergrad education in India is below par, except for a handful of excellent exclusive colleges.

It will be liberal studies, which would include the Sciences. It would be about training your mind to be well formed rather than just well informed. We are walking a different trajectory. We are not saying this will be a bridge to an MBA. It could be a bridge if you choose to. It’ll not be more of the same. It’ll be a three- or four-year programme; we have not come to a conclusion, but we are launching it by next year. We’re studying different models.

Will you be getting good faculty for the programmes? That’s always been the bane of Indian education.

Yes, because academics was never lucrative enough. Now it is not so. If you compare, an average manager gets ₹30 lakh in industry. That kind of money every faculty in the IIM system makes. Salaries are not a big differentiator anymore to win people away. Plus, the quality of life that you have attracts a lot of people. A lot of mid-career executives want to come to academia. Our PhD practice programme is attracting people from major mainstream organisations, including the IAS, IPS. What do they want a PhD for? Because they want to take to academic life.

So, contrary to what people believed, poor pay is changing, not dramatically, but certainly. For the practice track, we had 600 applications and at least nine or 10 people we took. They were high-quality applications.