Our top B-schools have successfully hid their shortcomings behind the mega pay-packets their graduates seem to attract rather effortlessly. How long can they do this?By Shivshankar Verma

The first IIM graduate I ever met was a friend's uncle who had his own business consultancy. He belonged to one of the earliest batches to pass out of IIM Ahmedabad, and had ventured out on his own after more than two decades of working for some of the best private companies. I met him to get his views on a research project I was doing on private sector employment.

It was the early '90s and the brand equity of IIM grads had gone up substantially in the marriage market as mainstream media's obsession with the annual placement season started. I remember, quite vividly, the day I became painfully conscious of my meagre takings after reading about the first IIM fresher to land a Rs10 lakh per year job. Two colleagues quit their jobs after reading that news to prepare full time for CAT. One of them made it and is now marketing head of a media company. The other went back to journalism and didn't do that bad for himself either.

My friend's uncle was very well networked and introduced me to senior managers at some well known companies, who were his former colleagues, to help me in my research. Though he appeared to be happy, it was obvious that he was not doing that well financially. He operated out of a small cubicle in a business centre, without any support staff, and drove an old Premier Padmini.

I asked him why he settled for such a low-profile existence when freshers from the same management institute he passed out more than two decades back were earning much more than he did. I was taken aback when he said he couldn't take it anymore, as extreme work stress was still an alien concept to me. The earlier jobs took too much out of him, he said, and he had to get out before he completely lost it. He admitted he barely earned enough to pay rent for the cubicle and other expenses and was surviving on his savings and some inherited assets. Didn't pick the jobs wisely or patiently and it was always a big struggle to prove himself to be worthy of the IIM tag, he said.

When will they be ready for business education?
When a nephew announced this week that he was quitting his job to focus all his energies on clearing the CAT in December this year, I had no reason to be surprised. He is barely three months into his first job with a leading IT services company, which picked him from campus with an annual salary package which was more than what I earned after 10 years of experience. That is what young professionals are expected to do these days. They see little value in earning experience at a real job. All they want to do is get into that premier B-school at the earliest and land that dream job which will earn them in less than a year what their dads earned in their entire careers.

How many of them are actually ready for business education? How many of them actually develop into mature, disciplined managers at the end of two years they spend inside the pressure cookers that the premier B-schools have become?

Yes, there are any numbers of spectacular success stories - stories of very young men who go on to rush up the corporate ladder at breathtaking speed. But, are there many failures as well? Those otherwise highly capable individuals, who fall behind just because they were thrust into a B-school too soon? Bet there are!

Like the young man I came across a few years back. He was recruited from an IIM to be co-head of the new media initiatives of a large publishing company. He landed the job presumably because he was a computer science graduate from one of the IIT's and new media business of the company was mostly about developing and promoting news websites. This young man had absolutely no previous experience and obviously jumped at the opportunity to become a profit centre head. As it was a completely new business for the company, there was no one to mentor him either. The other co-head was an editor responsible for content development and had little business experience. This young man struggled for two years before quitting and joining a FMCG company. Five years after IIM, he is still struggling to settle down in a career he is comfortable with. The sad part is that he was one of the toppers in his class at IIT and might have become a brilliant scientist or scholar if he had been mentored after graduation. He might have even succeeded as a manager, if he had a few years of experience before B-school.

Even if the numbers of those who fail as managers are relatively smaller than those who do well, why should we allow any of these precocious individuals to self-destruct? When our fast expanding economy needs every capable individual, in fact needed them yesterday, why should we allow any wastage of talent at all? All the IIM's and other major B-schools have to do is prescribe a minimum work experience of at least three years before anyone is admitted to a post-graduate programme, to ensure that these young professionals have a better chance of succeeding as managers.

The flea market that is placement season
The extremely short placement season is probably the worst feature of our B-schools. The frenzy, stress and haggling over the few days of a typical placement season are worse than flea markets. The rules are very similar to flea markets. The earliest customers often get to see the best quality wares and place their bids. Customers make their offers after a very superficial examination of the wares in the short period of time allotted to them. There is pressure on customers to make sure that their offers are good enough to be accepted, though they are not quite sure if the products are worth the money being offered. But, they don't have much choice as supply is limited and erratic.

The sellers, or students who also double up as products, have to decide quickly once the final offer is made. They have to make an on-the-spot decision whether they should take the offer from the first batch of customers or wait for the next batch. If any of the sellers fail to receive an offer for his or her products on the first day, pressure starts building up and such poor salesmen are often forced to sell out to any customer showing interest.

Positioning themselves and negotiating a good deal at the placement is the first real life business task for many of these young graduates. Why do our B-schools let their students go through this far-less than perfect system of landing a job?

Is it too difficult for these schools to devise a well drawn out placement process that starts right after internship? Yes, many students do receive pre-placement offers after their internships. But, most of them treat such offers as a fall back option in case they don't land anything better. Potential employers and students should be allowed to assess each other for sufficiently long periods before both sides can take informed, judicious decisions. That should definitely involve a series of meetings, like the multiple-level process in lateral recruitments. B-school recruitments should in fact be lengthier than lateral recruitments, where candidates can be judged on the basis of their performance records.

The only possible argument against a lengthy placement process is that it may distract students' attention on academics. Then, we are not talking about school kids but young adults who are among the best and brightest of their generation. There is no harm if they are initiated rather early into the art of multitasking, not allowing their studies to suffer while also hunting for a job.

Where are the good teachers?
I will definitely not win any bouquets for stating that our top B-schools owe most of their success to the extremely competitive selection process. But, that is the sad fact. Demand for graduates from these schools is so high that there is a virtual stampede every year to get into any of them, at any cost. Naturally, those who make it to these schools are most certain to be the top of the heap. Given such a talented pool, a good percentage of them will do extremely well in their lives – irrespective of the quality of business education they receive. And their successes rub off on the B-schools.

Indian B-schools hardly make it to international lists of top schools because they score very poorly on the quality of teaching faculty. The only exception is Indian School of Business, ranked in the top-20 in a recent listing (See: Indian School of Business beats IIMs to Financial Times' global 20 best business schools list), which manages with visiting faculty from top international schools through tie-ups. Why is it that our B-schools are unable to produce a steady stream of excellent academicians in management, though they have been offering fellow programmes in management for many years now?

The fact is that most of those who complete the fellow programmes at IIM's, designed to develop good quality academicians, take up regular jobs as the pay is much better. Of course, this is not the fault of the B-schools. To their misfortune, the HRD ministry at the centre which lords over institutions of higher learning have been headed by singularly incompetent, unimaginative and egoistic politicians who have refused to grant operational autonomy.

The B-schools did try to improve the situation by sharing consultancy revenues with the faculty. But, under the stiff hierarchical system in these schools, the senior professors benefit the most. Research assistants, who often hold doctorates in their subjects, to the senior professors earn no more than Rs15,000 per month. How can these schools expect to attract good talent when BPO's pay that kind of money to undergraduates?

The faculty shortage will get worse when the seven IIM's announced recently are established. ISB, which has operational freedom unlike the IIM's, has launched a programme to hire researchers who will go on to complete their doctorates and hopefully join as faculty.

The sharp fee hike announced by top B-schools should help them in funding research and programmes for faculty development. The IIM's should immediately increase the intake for the fellow programmes and hike the monthly financial support for students in that programme, which is now a pathetic Rs15,000 per month. These schools should also look at funding young academicians to complete their doctorates from the best universities abroad, in return for a committed period of service as faculty.

Instead of basking in the reflected glory of their young graduates becoming crorepatis, the top B-schools should recognise that all is not well in our business education system. They should act with alacrity to correct the shortcomings in the system and become the best B-schools internationally, in all respects. It will be a nice start if they can downplay the salary records during the placement season and celebrate the academic successes of their faculty.