Lately there is been lot of confusion in aspiring students related to management education. The privatization of education in our country and the popularity of management education with media creating hype about the kind of salaries being offered to the IIM graduates have led to a deformation to the image of an MBA course. Over then, not only the students even the parents who were very much into medical & engineering as the option for their child’s career got attracted to management education.Why not?

It promises good grooming, practical exposure, it fetches you a placement as early as in 2 years which is otherwise unlikely in the medical & engineering education. The invasion was expected as the starters were making good money and the economic conditions were even encouraging. From there aroused a great confusion in the middle class who always aspire to provide the best education possible. The expensiveness of management education was known as the pioneers in management education had already established it as a premium education that ends with a good paying job.

The sudden need of management education opened the idea of having a B-school for many. This need led to 100s and then 1000s and still increasing number of B-schools which ultimately caused lot of dilution in the quality standards of education & its facilitation formats. More & more universities added a management program which was very much on the lines of their master programs. This was a major drawback & differentiation to what we call management education & B-school education. The results started coming and the placements dipped in such programs which had almost negligible industry exposure for the students. The quality of the faculty/facilitators dipped as they were all the more replaced by the college tutors or those who were themselves not exposed to the B-school education.

The differences were clearly visible but the common man was so much so bombarded with options and so much unaware that he suffered. As a result a bad name for management education because what media spoke about packages was not for all. Even today, I get several doubtful calls from friends & family, colleagues & references asking me to choose from the list of B-schools they have got the letters from, it’s difficult. I am glad we got into the decent ones without having anyone to guide at that time. Nevertheless, the following could be checked at least:

Do’s:

Their affiliations & accredit-ions.
Program Design & Module. The curriculum can be checked.
Whether it’s a PGDBM or an MBA degree. Remember, MBA qualifies post graduation; the former is more like a diploma course.
The modus operandi & course structure.
Faculty & Value Added Services like soft skills training, language classes etc.
Talking to previous batches is also recommended.

Don’ts:

Avoid going by the advertisements & lavish infrastructure.
A check on the curriculum, some universities do a mere repetition of your BBA.
Don’t go by the foreign affiliations at once. Check that.
Hyped up packages & salary. Prefer checking the average salary instead.

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