The proliferation of the management institutions and increasing
pursuit of the management education which focused on the
specialist knowledge is a departure from the traditional
system of education. Moreover, the management education
that was earlier meant for the elite group is now recognized
for its contribution to mass education. The relevance of
the management education is more in the era of globalization
which has ushered in limitless opportunities and competition.
It seeks the application of integrated knowledge and multitasks/skills
approach. According to the National Knowledge Commission
of India, in 2006, there were 1,761 management institutes
enrolling 94,704 students for MBA/PGDBM program, but the
question is: Is the available infrastructure sufficient
to meet the growing demand. It is stated in the census of
2001 that there are 11 crore people in the age group of
18 to 24 in India and the size is projected to increase
with the passage of time adding more stress on the available
education infrastructure. The public expenditure on education
in India as a percentage of GDP declined from 3.84% in 1990-1991
to 3.50% in 2003-2004. Moreover, this allocation has been
inadequate as it can be observed from the data published
by the ministry of human development of India that 39 percentage
of adult constitute the illiterate population in 2001. The
economic growth trajectory poised around 8 percentage promises
greater job availability and hence it can be expected that
there will be greater demand for professional courses especially
in the management education.
This would certainly lead to
greater mismatch between demand and supply of management
institutions and with the government initiatives constrained,
the private sector is bound to reap the business opportunity.
It is good as long as private initiatives are creating standards
and norms that are comparable with the best practices in
the field of management education. In order to have credibility
and acceptability it is important to have affiliations from
universities and institutes empowered to monitor and regulate.
However, the growing apprehension is that private sector
participation in management education is merely a business
opportunity and hence on one hand it would try to commercially
exploit and on the other hand it would compromise on the
various competency parameters and standards of education.
The management institutions in India are facing the constraint
of experienced and well-qualified academicians, and there
is a scarcity of PhD qualified teachers. Hence, to overcome
this shortage, the alternative possibility is to attract
experienced and competent people from industry to join the
academics. However, the experienced corporate executives
may find the academic profession much less remunerative
and rewarding to corporate world. Hence, more often than
not the corporate executives willing to join academics are
those who have reached stalemate in furthering career prospects
or are constrained by immobility or consider academics as
a temporary arrangement to scour for better job opportunities.
Therefore, it is hard to find people who value the academic
profession and has a conviction in bringing about desirable
values and results in imparting management education.
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