Saturday, November 8, 2008

The Great Indian MBA dream..

"IIMA Grad bags 1.2 crore package"
"Its E for Entrepreneurship for Management Grads"
It all starts with such flashy headlines in newspapers. And hence begins a cascade of expectations and dreams. The rookie engineers, the commerce pros, the science geeks and all everyone who is anyone starts a pursual of the dream towards which the Indian MBA is moving.
The long nights for the entrance exam preparations (read preCAT preparations), the applications, the GDs and the PIs and finally the results of various prestigious B-Schools of India. It is a grill where everyone from coaching institutions to publishers and the B-School rating magazines to the B-Schools themselves are trying to bake their cakes on.
But amidst all this begins a hope for a sparkling career. Also a race against the "best brains of the country" and even more, a race against "time". The effort to score, the effort to enroll, the effort for a CGPA/CQPI and finally the effort for a great placement. There are a lot of success stories again. A lot of them again make it to the print.
But then there is a darker shade to it. Here, the race begins in an aptly similar manner. The same old aspiration or imposed aspiration. But then not a similar twist in the tail. There are shattered ambitions. There are people taking up not-so-premier institutes and eventually repenting in ways they can't admit to people. Many of these MBA grads with promising dreams about the future in the sought after corporate houses get pragmatic. The realization, of course, comes at a huge cost.
Here begins the phase of a debt track. Most of the students belonging to the rising middle class of India are generally not able to afford the educational cost rocketing into lacks of rupees and hence go for the easy option of educational loans. The seemingly simple trick goes real bad in case of a certain student failing to acquire a job and the EMIs starting to eat into the already small middle class revenue basket.
Hence results a helluva frustration and haplessness. Most of all, such situations tend to beat out the confidence out of these fortune seekers and make some of them "marked" failures. That probably is the only reason why every recession or economic downturn affects two things the most; the stock market and the B-Schools which face fading recruitment scenario.
And whats more to it? The B-Schools still keep on making lofty promises and newspaper headlines still keep on displaying myriad of success stories and hence there is another generation in the making of The Indian MBAs.

1 comment:

Anshi said...

Each word written here is true and well perceived. Few comments need to be pondered on:
1) MBA is not a professional course; it simply builds attitude/character and teaches what a corporate experience teaches by itself.
2) Supply Demand in role- I don't see the demand of MBA in coming future; we need to realize looking the economies around the world- possibly need of specialized professional courses or may be revival of PHDs.