JIGYASA: A QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE.

TOPIC: Education reform: bridge between

corporate and management education.

Submitted By:
Shama Parveen Neeraj Kumar
MBA 3rd sem. (2009-11) MBA 3rd sem. (2009-11)
LPU, Jalandhar LPU, Jalandhar
CONTENTS

1. Abstract

2. Objectives

3. Introduction: evaluation of problems in Indian education system

4. Academic perspective towards management education in corporate

5. Research and development in Indian education.

6. Recommendation and possible solution towards bridging the gap.

7. References/bibliography
 ABSTRACT

In this paper, the growth of management education in India and the consequent development
of the sector are analyzed. The widening gap areas in the industry and associated education
sector are identified through this paper. The higher educational programs in India have grown
very rapidly to meet the needs of the explosive growth in both the management and technical
education but this growth is not in synchronization with the requirements of the industry due
to non-existence of collaboration and co-operation between the two. The professional
education in management in India and the higher educational degree programs are very
precisely focused on producing quality graduates with refined managerial skills. While the
corporate sector in India is in principle a service provider and a consumer market that mainly
requires for operation and maintenance related activities, as such the skills imparted by the
education sector are rarely utilized, which results in dissatisfaction among the managers from
education management. The academia has been conducted along with detailed discussions to
explore the reasons for this ever-increasing gap, ways and means to arrest this trend and
future course of action for the academia and the corporate sector to develop. A study related
to other emerging technical, managerial fields like computer science has also been made for
the comparison. On the basis of this extensive exercise outlined above, measures have been
suggested to bridge the gap between the education and the corporate needs of the
management sector. By adopting these measures our education sector shall be successful in
filling the existing gaps.
By adopting these measures not only our education sector will become more beneficial to the
corporate, but the corporate would also get the advantage of immense potential of young
graduates and the academic research. India’s economy is in the growing stage which is a
good opportunity for students from Indian origin and students from international arena as
well. There are a large no. of students (Indian and international students) approaching the
Indian universities. Education in India has achieved international standards and is there in
place since ages - the system known as “Gurukul” education system. The advents of
Britishers in India lead our education system to redefine its major language of
communication – the system adopted English to be its prime language. The advantages of
studying in India are very high as compared to other countries whether they are developed or
stronger in economy .India being a developing nation has a huge scope ahead in education
sector and India will play a major role in the development of other economies as well. India
being a best place to study has a many key points which attract everyone are as follows:
1. Low cost

2. Quality education

3. Facilities of Financial assistance for education

4. Consultation services

5. Uniquely defined courses

The advantages of education in India are utilised by both the people of Indian origin as well
as non-resident Indians, apart from people of foreign origin who use it as a platform to hone
their skills and move ahead with the world.
OBJECTIVES

1. To evaluate Indian education system and to conduct Gap Analysis so as to be able to

bridge the existing gaps between the management education system and the industry.

2. To study the development of Indian education system and role of research in the
context of Indian education system.

The rapid progress of management education in particular and of the education system in
general calls for a rapid and unremitting change in the curriculum requirements for degree
programs. Educationists argue that we should not respond aggressively and rather focus on
the fundamentals which will serve the students well for an entire career.

Evaluation of Problems in Indian Education System

The Indian education system needs to be very effective and needs to be reformulated as the
parents and general public have been displaying signs of discontentment with the existing
system. Contrary to this belief, eminent educationists have been advocating in favour of the
present continuous evaluation system. The new reform in Indian Education is quite
acceptable but it will take some time for the people to realize the importance of the system.
Education in India has been privatized which has created opportunities for all and thus the
sector has been witnessing rapid growth. The higher educational programs in India have
grown and transformed rapidly to meet the needs of the explosive growth in corporate arena.
Due to the recent government policies which encourage higher education, the number of
institutions providing higher education has sprung up and also the gap between the
requirements of the corporate and the courses taught at the institutes of higher learning has
been widening. In recent times, a lot of emphasis has been placed on developing higher
education to meet the emerging demands of corporate sector in India by providing more
facilities in various institutes, developing scholarships and encouraging research activities in
the local universities by providing research grants. The corporate sector in India has also
witnessed an unprecedented growth in the last few years, however, the higher educational
degree programs are very precisely focused on producing quality graduates and management
professionals who have highly refined knowledge abilities and skills.
Unfortunately, those skills rarely get utilized in an industry that mainly requires managers for
decision making and strategy related activities. These conflicting interests of academia and
the industry are forcing them to diverge needs and not facilitate a university - industry
(corporate) liaison process. This article surveys this widening gap and suggests ways and
means to bridge this ever-increasing gap. The main reasons behind the current disparity
between the universities and the corporate is that the universities are generally governed by
foreign qualified faculty, who have all done their research and development work in the
Western developed countries where the research problems originated often by corporate
developmental needs. Such non-existent needs within the corporate in India are creating
islands where the universities are trying their best to prepare managers and professionals for
an R & D based environment and in actual practice, these well-educated and well-versed
students lose interest in the management studies rigor of these advanced university courses,
due to their non-applicability in the practical fields. They often request to revise the course
contents to make them more relevant to the local corporate needs. The requirements of the
corporate are generally technology oriented.
By introducing such changes in the curricula, the management education program would
change to a practical program. Having identified the bridge, methods should be suggested to
help bridge this gap. The solutions proposed in this study are based on an extensive survey of
the corporate sector and in-depth discussions with the corporate professionals, and academic
professors. The primary contribution of this work is towards the identification of a very
relevant issue within the higher education sector in India and towards providing a generic
framework for improving the university-corporate liaison within the management education.
The view of the academics which has evolved through many elaborate discussions is
summarized in the next section and the final section provides recommendations and
suggestions to arrest the trend of the corporate and education system and following different
paths of evolution towards a diverging future. These suggestions aim at bringing the practice
and teaching closer together for an enhanced and sustainable development of the corporate
culture in India.
Eight factors were identified where students failed (elements academia)
 1. Attitude: Every student must develop in him positive attitude. He / she should be
keen to learn and ready to work where job opportunities are available.
2. Business communication: Use of jargons and specific language should be used.
3. Grooming/personality: Leadership qualities and influencing personality should be
developed.
4. Corporate Exposure: This helps in bringing experience, decision making ability
along with practical knowledge.
5. Domain knowledge: Autonomous computer activity or in other specialized
discipline.
6. Sales and customer service: If one is at top level management and are asked to sell a
product than he/she should be able to sell it and satisfy customer.
7. Basic managerial skills: The skills which a management professional should possess
in order to justify his/her knowledge and ability.
8. Ethics: One should follow all the policies and rules made in order to maintain a
discipline in corporate.
These qualities lack in students and this leads to a gap between the corporate and education
system in context of the Indian system. The emphasis lies only on bookish knowledge rather
than on practical abilities. A student should be more concerned with practical knowledge. If
we take example of IIM’S, IIT’S &top B-schools, the practical knowledge is imparted by use
of various case studies. Taking the example of US study curriculum, the main focus lies on
practical concepts from primary to higher education which leads them to be more efficient
and good in terms of decision making - they are able to accomplish the purpose. For ex: a
student after completing its master degree will approach to a job rather than continuing its
studies further ; they also have an option of doing PHD rather than doing a job which will
help them to do research and lead our country to be best at management education and to
bridge a gap between corporate and management education.
Academic Perspective towards Management Education in Corporate

Many of the well versed academic professors believe that creative education is the foundation
on Enlightenment of future managers and who can formulate solutions to the problems are a
dire need of the day. The educators further add the importance of innovation and agree that
one must possess comprehensive knowledge and competence in the current sophisticated and
competitive world of management education which keeps evolving. Many educators agree
that their task lies in providing the correct fundamentals for their students which serve the
students over an entire length of their Career and since the technologies keep evolving, the
need to bring a education reform we have the capacity to self-learn the evolving technologies
as they progress in their career paths. The professors always stress the need to maintain an
undergraduate /masters degree program which allows the managers of education
management to pursue higher education in the advanced western countries and prepare
managers who can adapt and work not only in the service provisioning in a competitive
world but also in the design offices and in the R & D wings of multinationals.
The academics also argue that since human learning varies from person-to-person, the
universities should keep trying to produce quality Graduates of international standard and
who must adapt to their circumstances and company requirements. Often also, many young
institutions are trying hard to build small research groups within their universities which can
generate relevant research; they emphasize the need of managerial skills sophistication
among their students. However, there actually exists a big conflict of interest in terms of the
academics and the industry in terms of the result that needs to be extracted out of these
research teams. As emphasized earlier, there should be a practice to bridge the gap between
corporate and management education so the academics do not find benefits in collaborating
with the industry as it cannot provide the kinds of problems on which internationally
acceptable research can be undertaken.
Research & Development in Indian Education

In India, during examinations students are gullible and they take advantage of exams and
memorize answers for the sake of examination and as they walk down the examination hall
they forget all that they have prepared few hours before. But when we examine and note the
similarities, difference and analogous with the Chinese education system, it is requires that
every student has to write one thesis paper in order to graduate besides other course
requirement papers and exams and one master degree student publishes at least one paper in
addition to their thesis. But in India except few top institutions like IIM’S, IIT’S JNU, Delhi
university, no other institution focuses on the research aspect and thereby does not motivate
its students on the same. If we talk about the other countries which are being changed over
time so as to be stronger or more complete or more useful because of innovation they are
different in their approach because they are full of innovation and technology which made
them superior than the rest of the world not because they have natural resources or they have
exploited poor countries. China is moving up to 2nd position in research output after the
USA with 166205 documents where India secured 10th position with 38140 documents. This
proves that China invests huge money in its R&D sector which is about 1.80% of GDP and
USA invests 2.5% Of GDP on R&D. Further China is planning to spend 2.5%of GDP on
R&D. Mushrooming of engineering &management colleges in India day by day shows how
reforms in education (which are making setting up of such colleges easier everyday) are not
helping the students in long run.

Stude 1st 2nd 3rd 4th

nt Sem Sem Sem Sem
A 90 86 88 80
B 85 82 87 89
C 82 82 82 82
D 62 65 72 82
E 56 50 65 70
The above graph shows the evaluation of students by %age system and grading system. A
student who study and get good marks in class such as a topper student (90%) but sometimes
the topper students get 80% , but again an average student gets 60% to 65%, and sometimes
an average student score 75% where the topper gets 85%. The capability comes of both the
students the average students have a good susceptibility of performance moreover the
frequency of average students has increased but the frequency of topper students frequency
has gone down and the quality of average students have increased. The evaluation of students
should be judged on the basis of standards set and not on previous performance. Thus it
should be evaluated on the basis of capability and hard work in current context.
Recommendations and Possible Solutions towards Bridging the Gap

Whereas the education system within corporate and management education has seen a rapid
growth in recent years (thanks to the private sector universities and the aggressive promotion
of related management education by the government), these educational degree programs are
being developed on the western model of university degrees in our developing education
system to provide insight to education management . Most of the faculty involved in
curriculum development as well as the regulators of such Activities are governed by these
foreign qualified decision makers. Blindly following the western models cannot be an
acceptable approach in the long run in our local settings. As this would very severely widen
the gap between the requirements of the bridging the gap between the corporate and
management and the graduating students, and when these technically trained graduates do
not find job opportunities which match their skill set, they would start getting frustrated and
thus, their potential would go wasted.
It might even become a reality in a few years where masters in “management in any field”
are more in the demand by entrepreneurs who understand corporate finance, organizational
behaviours and human resource management instead of purely technical people with a strong
mathematical background. We would in the long run either need to tune the bachelors and
masters programs in management to provide more space for management related courses and
reduce the number of technical courses or start parallel programs. The education system in
India also needs to realize that having deployed the networks now, they do need Efforts to
generate local solutions to their problems, and reduce their dependencies. Since the corporate
would always provide very high cost solutions, and if these solutions are locally tackled, they
would reduce these costs tremendously and since the development of these solutions would
require highly refined management skills. These small solution providing groups within the
management would give a valuable chance to the highly management students to practice
their abilities and utilize the knowledge they acquired in their professional education. Thus,
in principle, there are efforts required from both ends to bridge the gap and the academics
need to understand the requirements of the industry and tune their courses to match the local
needs, and the industry also needs to put in some effort to develop small research and
development groups within their organizations to tap the full potential of the best technical
minds among the management education. The management education should promote the
good practices of top institutes to other tier II and tier III educational institutes so that the
learning outcomes are there and practical knowledge or practical should be focused in order
to promote the education management system .in order to cope with the corporate culture and
to bridge the gap we need to emphasise on practical applications and handle the stress so
there is need to bring more of practical’s to curriculum.
To analyse the performance of a student we need to check the student on certain parameters
that are on the basis of capability and hard work. For example - We are analysing the
performance of two students studying in same class. Typically we check previous academic
records and we analyse the performance. But to determine the nature, value, quality, ability,
extent, or significance of student we need to check on same standard and for this some
standard should be set. In essence of the criteria should be on capability and hard work .to
bridge a gap between corporate and education management we need to set and have a look on
intended expenditures along with proposals for how to meet them.
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