MBAUniverse.com Interview: MBA market will change dramatically in near future, Mr Kamlesh Sajnani, MD, IMS Learning Resources

From a humble start by its founder Prof NR Rane in 1977, it now enrolls over 50 thousand MBA aspirants every year, and has diversified with its own B-school and job-oriented programmes in last few year.
It all started in 1970, when IIM Ahmedabad appointed Prof Rane as a part time lecturer in the Written Analysis and Communication department for their Business Writing Course. For 2 years he bided time traveling between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. It is during these trips that the idea of IMS germinated. In the late 70s, working out of a table in his CA friends office, he started Institute of Management Studies (IMS) to help students through the maze of management education.
Now, having participated in management education boom for last 3 decades, IMS is in a vantage position to talk about trends that are impacting the domain. MBAUniverse.com interviewed Mr Kamlesh Sajnani, MD, IMS Learnings Resources to know about how he sees the developments so far, and future trends. Mr Sajnani is the Managing Director at IMS Learning.
In this interview, Mr Sajnani outlines the segmentation of professional education space in India, the imminent changes in MBA market and how aspirants should make the best use of current job-boom in India.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: IMS was set up in 1977 with just 7 students. How do you look back at the journey? What makes IMS different?
Mr Sajnani: We have come this far because of our pioneering correspondence programs and the value system that IMS believes in. It is important for us that each student is helped to succeed. At IMS, we believe that each student has to be guided according to his potential. It is also important to us that the students believe in themselves. This counseling and mentoring students has helped us achieve this great milestone.
Q: In the management education domain what changes and trends have you observed of late?
Mr Sajnani: Management education is here to stay. There are three reasons for this. First, India is becoming prosperous and the benefits of liberalization are now noticed and felt in cities and towns other than metros. Secondly, 50% contribution to our GDP is thru the service industry and finally, the scale of operations and geographical reach of organizations is growing.
However, until a few years back and even today most students see MBA as a job giving qualification, therefore there was a surfeit of MBA schools, unfortunately the quality of the institutes and students produced was in question. Now that jobs are available after graduation the students would rather go directly to a job and then look at an MBA after two to three years of work experience.This will give them the appropriate experience and maturity to handle the MBA program and really add value to themselves, the schools that they go to and the companies which they work for.
In this scenario, we will see that students will now look for institutes which will enhance their career dramatically rather than just be vehicles for providing jobs. The current institutes will now have to provide quality and specialized education leading to responsible jobs in industry. Unfortunately this enhancement of quality education will not come by quickly, due to lack of experienced teachers.
Q- While speaking to a group of academicians and management aspirants, you recently said that in next 5 years most top Indian B-schools will be not open to admitting students without working experience. Why do you believe so
Mr Sajnani: This leads from the economic conditions currently prevailing in the country. Students will stop seeing MBA as a job qualification since they will be getting jobs directly out of graduation. However, having got their first jobs, they will feel a need for career growth two to three years down the line. This is the time when they will seek to retool their careers by educating themselves further. This teeming number of students with higher aspiration will be back in the education market looking for good qualifications to enhance their value. The colleges in return will have a huge pool of work experience candidates to choose from and as usual they will find the experienced students to be more mature and able to absorb the rigors of MBA education.
Also, companies will now not need too many fresh MBA graduates since these positions will be taken by graduate students who will have domain expertise thru their own inherent talent or will gain this expertise by short duration certification programs. The companies now will be really looking for strategists who are more mature and experienced to handle larger responsibilities and who have done professional programs like CA or MBA and also have work experience before these qualifications.Therefore there will be companies going to the best MBA colleges to pick students with at least a few years experience.
Q: So the whole management and professional education market will get segmented
Mr Sajnani: Yes, the management and professional education market will see segmentation soon.
I believe there will be many ladders for recruitment and education:
First, Students will get job by short duration certification programs or with plain graduation itself.
Second, Middle level positions will be given by promotions or thru education thru not so great MBA institutes.
Third, there will be quality institutes offering MBA programs offering 2yr full time education for students with work experience between 1 to 4 years, to fill up slightly higher positions in organizations.
And finally, there will be really good B-schools offering 1 yr programs to develop leadership in business. These institutes will offer programs to students with more than 5 years relevant work experience.
As a result of this segmentation, companies can then choose to go to any of these levels for searching for talent.
Now once this segmentation takes place, which should in a moving economy like ours, we will see that the best B-schools which produce about 2000 graduates in the year will move to producing leaders which was their original mission in any case.
Q: Your idea resonates with international MBA market
Mr Sajnani: Yes. As a case study we can look at developed economies where the average age of a student in Harvard or Purdue or such schools is 28-29yrs of age (5-9 yrs) of relevant work experience. The best international schools actually do not take fresh graduates in their professional programs like MBA. Also there is mass recruitment at the graduate level. Also students take short duration programs to attain domain expertise. Therefore internationally the companies go to different campuses to fulfill their HR needs.
Q: How is IMS reacting to the changes in MBA and professional education market that you have just outlined?
Mr Sajnani: IMS currently wishes to be in all the areas of education with a focus on post graduate or graduate education or training or skill enhancement. There are almost 10 million graduates in the country passing out annually. This number is set to rise in the future. However, our graduates are not industry ready they do not have specialist skills. At the other end the industry is screaming for educated masses. IMS believes there is an opportunity to bridge this gap. Even if we take all the students from all the B-schools put together in the country, there will be a shortage of skilled manpower and domain expertise at all levels.
The latest initiative of IMS is the IMS PROSCHOOL. IMS has started specific skill programs in finance and retail, these programs are of 3-6 months duration. IMS Proschool will be able to place all the students from the programs successfully. These students should be either in their graduation or should have just passed graduation. These students can take these programs and IMS will be making them industry ready within 6 months against the regular two years that it takes. We have already trained more than 3000 such individuals in the last year for the Finance vertical.
This initiative will not only help the students and the industry, but the community and country at large.
Q: IMS has also started a new B-school called Praxis Business School last year. What is the thinking there?
Mr Sajnani: Well, since we have been in the MBA training Business for a long time, it was a natural upward integration for us. We believe IMS because of experience does at a certain level understand the trends and the need for good managers in corporates so we decided to take a plunge in this area. PRAXIS wishes to become one of the top schools in the country in the next 5 years. However, mission for PRAXIS is simple create industry ready contributors. Today industry needs as many trained individuals as possible and some more from us would definitely help. You will be glad to know that in the first year of operations itself PRAXIS has been able to align itself with many reputed organizations who will be taking our students for summer placements.
Q: Moving to CAT, what trends have you observed with respect to this unpredictable exam? How is it changing.
Mr Sajnani: Unlike the big hullabaloo that is being made about the CAT, IMS believes it is a very simple issue. If you see the number of students taking the CAT has been increasing every year. This year almost 2.30 lakh students are going to take this test. The test setter has a very unique problem. Logistically it is a nightmare to select 1500 students (these are the seats available in all the IIMs put together) from so many. A simple calculation shows that approximately 0.75% students are to be selected. In this case what will the test setter do? Obviously, the selection committee would try to set a test in a manner that the majority of the students get eliminated.
Now how do they do this? One way is to reduce the number of questions in the test and increase the time so that the student is forced to do as many questions as possible. Second way to achieve the same is to make all the questions compulsory and award a negative point for every incorrect answer and not attempted question. The third way to achieve this objective is to increase the number of choices given to the student. Or use all these three together and add more such tangles. Students because they do not know this problem think that the pattern changes every year.
So in my opinion logistics is forcing the test setter to change the test structure and arrive at an optimum solution. If you look at the GMAT, it has settled on the same formula and the students taking the GMAT are almost today equal to those taking the CAT. So yes the structure of the test keeps changing. But the test also does not change at the subject tested level. This is what the students must understand. How can the CAT change the subjects -- the two that all B-school tests test you on globally are Math and English. Anyone should be able to tell you that currently there is nothing else that can be used. So if you see carefully, the test is changing structurally but not intrinsically.
Q: Finally, what is your advice to all aspiring management students?
Mr Sajnani: First of all, it is important for students to know why they are getting into management education is it only for a job or for a better reason. Secondly, once they decide to take this on they must give it their best shot and be very disciplined. Third they should choose a good mentor or counselor to give them advice on the B-schools and the options available to them. Fourth the students should not be in a hurry to do an MBA as this qualification will cost them two years and therefore it must be completed from a relevant institute and should be of a good pedigree. And last but not the least, the students of management should think global and include international education in their agenda.