| | 8 December 2020HIGHERReviewIN MY VIEWIN MY VIEWDEVELOPMENTS IN MBA EDUCATION IN INDIABy R Jayaraman, Professor, S.P. Jain Institute of Management & ResearchThe first IIM was started in Ahmedabad in 1961, followed by IIMC in 1965 and IIMB in 1973. Thus was begun a new chapter in MBA education, when the govern-ment of India took a momentous step of introducing high quality, world class MBA education in the country. It was Peter Drucker who introduced MBA education in the USA and influ-enced many developments in the field of management education, including the much used Management By Ob-jectives ­ MBO ­ which once used to be the rage in companies. MBO was the first systematic effort to do cor-porate and aggregate planning, using a market focus. Since the first IIMs were opened, a flood of MBA colleges sprouted all over India. In fact, Indian MBA education is quite well regarded all over the world. The country has produced many management stal-warts like CK Prahlad, Ram Charan, Dr. Govindarajan, Bhattacharya of Warwick School and innumerable others, who, although of Indian ori-gin, did not always gain fame and for-tune for their work done in India. In India, MBA schools can be found in large numbers in cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmed-abad, Pune, Indore and other cities. A key development in the last few years has been the opening of new IIM's, in cities like Indore, Tiruchirapally, Rohtak, and others, for a total of 17 more, after A,B,C; for a total of 20 IIMs till 2019. This was done in tan-dem with the opening up of new IITs and many of the NITs being recog-nized as at par with the IITs. The significance of these new in-stitutions is that the government and businesses in India, which recruit many candidates from these premier institutes, not only recognize the im-portance of MBA education, but also high-quality MBA education. Many companies from abroad are also now actively recruiting from the IIMs as well as, Indian companies are sending the new recruits to their foreign out-posts. Thus, in India, MBA education has come to stay and occupy a very important position in the academic calendar of students who are in search of good career opportunities. In view of the significance of MBA education, to the country, to busi-nesses, to students, to parents who are always concerned about the wel-fare of their wards, it is imperative that standards and curricula should be maintained at very high levels. Naturally, not all institutes can and will be able to function at such high levels all the time, however, the en-deavor must be to constantly upgrade and ensure quality education, which will serve the customer needs. One fact that may work against the Indian MBA system so far, is that education is seen more as a career finder rath-er than a developer of management thinkers. This difference is crucial in the long run. Institutions such as Har-vard, Stanford, MIT Sloan School, Wharton and such likes, have not only provided the American industry with high class graduates who can manage and run and create world class busi-R Jayaraman, Professor
< Page 7 | Page 9 >