In the last five years, India has seen widespread experimentation with the MBA degree – from sectoral MBAs to executive courses and distance programs over videoconferencing – both government and private business schools have tried to push the limits of how management education is delivered. But all this is a bubble waiting to explode at the end of which only four main models of MBA would remain, says Prof Bala V Balachandran, JL Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Management at Kellogg School of Management, Illinois and the Founder of Chennai’s Great Lakes Institute of Management. (Special column written for the PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings, 2010)

How will business schools and their programs shape up in India in the future? The question is perhaps best answered by likening the management education field to a perfectly competitive economy. In such an economy, there is a fundamental offering which was once a seller’s proposition but has now become a buyer’s proposition. The customers decide what they want and how they want it and the seller provides them with as close a variant as possible. The number of sellers offering ‘homogenous substitutes’ are several and they compete fiercely with one other to attract the best customers. In our case, the b-school is the seller, with the offering being a top of the line management degree or certificate; while the students are customers, the ultimate consumers are the corporations that hire them and who realise the full value of the student hires. A good school becomes a great school only when it realises the strategic importance of both sets of customers and aligns itself to not only satisfy but also delight both.

Most b-schools today are tweaking the basic two-year model by adding or eliminating some elements with a view to deliver an outstanding proposition to the students and corporates. This behaviour will only intensify in the coming years and until some form of consolidation happens, we are set to witness significant action in the management education landscape in India.

The b-school education scene is still in a nascent stage in India as compared to their more established peers in the West. In the coming years, we will see an unprecedented growth in the number of Institutes offering management education in a variety of innovative formats largely spearheaded by industrial houses, ministers and perhaps a cohort of smart and intelligent professors. Differentiation will thus become critical. The differentiation will be either on:

1. Vertical alignment (focusing on Technology, Agriculture, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Family Managed Business, Consulting, etc)
2. Duration of the program (two-year, one-year (12 months), 1.5 years (18 months), 15 months, weekend and part-time programs). But these are likely to be popular at the urban or semi-urban centers due to proximity issues.
3. Location (partly local and partly global where some segments will be in India and the last immersion could be in some part of the world like Singapore, Europe, Middle-East & Dubai or USA)
4. International label (study in the India campus of a Western University considering the proposal of the Union Minister for HRD, Shri Kapil Sibal’s plans to allow foreign Universities to establish campuses in India)
5. Academic excellence (where the possibility of being tutored and mentored by the best professors and authorities in academia and industry is what appeals most to the prospective applicant). Innovative curriculum design blending academic elegance with business relevance, delivered by genius professors is a dynamite combination and will become a key differentiator in the years to come.
6. Executive format education (offered to professionals who are on the managerial or leadership track with eight years plus work experience, or are people with special expertise in an area but are specifically looking for career shifts)
7. Placement and career options (bulk of students join b-schools to better their career prospects and the course is viewed as the means to achieving this end. Where a school is able to offer outstanding placement services or career options to the students, that school is automatically a popular choice. What initially started as an auxiliary service out of moral responsibility on the part of the institute, has now become a significant decision variable on the part of the b-school aspirant and will continue to do so)

Given that the US model, which was the mother of all MBA programs, started in early 1920s with Harvard and the likes of Kellogg, Wharton, Chicago or Stanford and still has some grey areas, the million-dollar question is what will be the new (perfected) model of MBA education and will it originate through self-examination by the US Top 5 b-schools or from some other country such as India, China or South America?

My own guess is it will evolve from the Indian experience. The western model while sound in disciplinary principles lacks in the area of ethical grounding and moral responsibilities. The Indians however have for centuries lived by dharmic principles which have been passed down from generation to the next right from the Gita and Upanishads to the treatises of Kautilya. This allows us to naturally and seamlessly integrate these into the curriculum and training leading to creation of responsible corporate citizens. The sub-prime crisis in the US in 08-09 has shown us only too well that extreme reliance on incentives could lead to greed and Profitability could lead to ‘Profiteering’ where moral responsibility and ethical behavior is slack. Likewise, the American dominance in the field Marketing and Sales with Customer Centricity will remain unparalleled. Thus, the best of both worlds may perhaps be the answer.

I am confident that India will experiment with multiple models, and the spurious money-making set-ups such as a few distance or correspondence and web-based solutions will be tried out and abandoned as their basic foundations are flawed. Finally when the dust settles, we will be left with the Final Four models of MBA: Two-year, One-year, part-time and Executive MBA Part-time with some vertical focus. What model makes sense for the student depends on a variety of intrinsic factors such as personal goals and ambitions, personal circumstances, etc. It would be difficult to suggest a one-size-fits-all solution. No matter what, this is an interesting phase in the management education life cycle and may the best model win!

Prof Bala V Balachandran is the JL Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Management (Emeritus in service) at Kellogg School of Management, Illinois. He is also Founder and Dean of Great Lakes’ Institute of Management at Chennai and serves as the Executive Professor and Strategy Advisor to the Dean of Bauer College, Houston.