The issues before the participants were

iii. How are business schools creating value for the community at large?

iii. Are Indian b-schools globally focused and able to impart training to prepare their students to face a globalised world?

iii. Are top companies willing to look beyond the IIMs?

Before the roundtable was opened for discussion, Raman provided an overview of the business school scenario in India, describing the growth trend and the recent spurt in quality business schools.

Anil: Business schools in India are plenty and demand for management students is certainly growing. I have no worry about the number of students. My worry is more about executive education. Here b-schools should not only offer great value but also help faculty acquire practical knowledge by working closely with industry, which they could then pass on in the classroom. The Global Leadership Programme of insead of France is a case in point.

The core question is not about size and number in b-schools, but what they teach. Are they preparing future managers as good human beings capable of management, who can apply knowledge and skills from the campus to the needs of the greater community? Are b-schools graduates grounded in reality?

Bimal: Schooling is not about education itself. They should look at emotional intelligence. What would you do in a crisis?

Anjali: The western education pattern which b-schools have adopted provides skills to handle a tricky corporate situation, but may not work in real life crises. You need softskills. You need deeper understanding to draw forth your emotions from within. Look at the cumulative learning process; we need to review learning techniques; teaching techniques, and the evaluation pattern.

Ashwani: You may need these skills to get on with your life. You don't need an mba to go up the leadership ladder. We did some quick research to find out what b-schools some of the top ceos attended to decide on which b-school our daughter should go to, and came up with this surprising list of ceos without any management degree. Of course, b-schools help bring about a visible change in attitude and equip students with necessary skills.

Siddharth: Behind many of the financial scams in recent times there have been mba passouts. Take our dcm Training programme for management graduates, which is more rigorous in content and scope than many b-school curriculums. The leaders we produced were innumerable and these possess the Indian ethos. B-schools teach that you can't scale up unless you go to the capital market. But do they, for instance, equip a student to manage a strike, a death in the company, floods, earthquake... I came across this excellent Massachusetts Institute of Technology internship programme which insists that the students are sent to learn music, dance, work with community programmes, all with the idea of exposing them to the real world. In India most mbas do not want to go to the boondocks.

Shyam: isb, with which I was associated, has tried to impart this sort of training to impart values and ethics for its students to make them go beyond the "what is in it for me?" mode. Learning often takes place in b-schools from others in the same class. Besides most schools have accumulated students with analytical backgrounds, the Left brain variety. The possible way of balancing this is to increase the diversity in classrooms by increasing the gender equity and introducing the ethos of research.

Anjali: There is a clear brahminical approach to teaching and learning in business schools. The schools prefer bringing in experts to make the students listen rather than encourage them to work with industry to develop new approaches.

Ashwani: The engagement of faculty in the business school consultancy is shallow. They are not involved in actual businesses but prefer to consult on a specific problem. They do not take back their experience to the classroom. The students benefit nothing from this sort of faculty experience.

Bimal: The schools works on short-term goals, there is no long-term view. Everyone is in it, the administration, the faculty and the students. The society itself is like this. The reward and punishment system that we have caters to this phenomenon. You have to get a gold medal or nothing. This kind of reward system loses focus. The students expect rewards or punishment, and do not put their minds to the task. They need endorsement for every action. This has taken a toll of the system.

Anjali: I entirely agree with Bimal. The cat system of filtering has collected only analytical minds in our campuses, the Left brains. There is no way of gauging real talent and interest of individual students. cat or a similar method of filtering candidates for admission have many inherent problems as they overemphasise on the analytical aspects and do not gauge the mindset of the students which often leads them to pursue dreams which may not match with their real worth or mental pursuit. It takes a lot of self discipline and enquiry to understand the future one wants to inherit.

Ashwani: I was approached by an IIM to participate in admission interviews, and they told me that I would need to look at 500 candidates in about eight days. It is impossible to find out the real worth of an individual in such a short time. Leadership is not about merely possessing superior knowledge or skills, but in its application. Princeton has since modified its test procedures to allow people with less analytical but greater leadership qualities to enter the system. After all, running an industry is not about figures it is about the mind and how creative it is.

There is another lacuna. The world is getting global and no Indian b-school, for that matter even many top ones abroad, have understood the need to prepare their students to face a globalised world. Everything that is being taught is relevant to the companies operating within a defined environment. The world is not like that any more. People have to work across cultures and nations. If Infosys goes abroad, it has to learn how to cope with local needs. Perhaps, b-schools should look at equipping their students with skills one year in India and the whole of next year in some campus abroad. A mere three- to four-week visit will not do. One has to live and work in a global environment to appreciate global needs.

Shyam: Take Indian campuses. Many come from an entrepreneurial or family business background. Their need is to learn not just skills but the culture of working with different people to create sustainable wealth. We at Grow Talent in fact, offered a course at the Indian School of Business on the mind, body and soul, precisely aiming at this need. It is another matter that the students, in a hurry to cram far more than they could ever take, did not take the course seriously and we had to drop it.

Anjali: Yes, I think schools should look at preparing students to work in teams, as working across cultures means accommodating different people, and listening to people to understand life. Often we find that people have no training in simply to sit and listen. We do programmes with senior executives to simply sit and dream, think of all the things that they ought to have done and when the mind is clear, solutions emerge. This is something the b-schools need to understand and impart to their students, the need to think and dream.

Ashwani: Let me point at a simple thing. Our brightest and best boys, for instance, are not trained to deal with people using global conference calls. How do you get them to team with people from different nations each with an independent disposition and time zone? Not a difficult thing to crack. Also it is alright to think
for oneself and exhibit a narrow view of worrying about oneself in isolation of others for a short period of time. In the long run these tendencies vanish. What we have to worry about is whether the person is capable of working in teams. My personal experience is that people who take up sports and events management in the campuses get to understand what it means work with teams, sacrifice their self interest and bring up a team consciousness. This should be encouraged. Learning in post mba environment is equally important. Most companies have a fantastic learning environment and are extremely serious in helping their people learn more. It always works.

Bimal: Team play in classroom has to be taken more seriously and also the need for working in live projects, to gain practical experience.

Thothathri: As top recruiters do you look for such values and learnings, beside skillsets, in the students that you select?

Anil: This is interesting. The b-schools know how to beat the system. I know of schools that spend 80 to 100 hours to equip their students to respond to the requirements of each prospective recruiter. "Grow Talent will ask questions about ethics and values," "Bimal Rath will ask about emerging markets in Asia" and so on. Like everything, placement is also a process that has to be addressed systematically, never mind the student may not get the best fit.

Bimal: There is no foolproof method. We, for instance, send more than five people from our company to each campus which can be prohibitively expensive. But the cost of getting stuck with a wrong candidate may be even more. We also are also always willing to look at campuses which are not necessarily in the big league. And that helps.

Ashwani: Even with the best efforts there is a likely chance that the management students will stay around for the short-term. Eventually people find their way to the right place, may not be the same company with which they start out. It is absolutely fine to move around but one has to be clear about what one wants and work towards it. That is what all successful people have done.

Siddharth: Hype is okay but without adequate softskills and an open mind for learning management students cannot go very far. This has to be borne in mind.