'We must raise the bar to impart lifelong learning in B-schools'

Students coming to the workforce should be ready for "lifelong learning" as the business environment is changing fast, said Rama Bijapurkar, former board member and visiting faculty at IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A), here on Wednesday.

She was chief guest at the BSmart HR Conclave: Shaping Tomorrow's Workforce, an event BSmart HR CONCLAVE organised by Business Standard.

Bijapurkar recalled the teachings of the "grand old man" of IIM-A, Ravi Mathai, who had a simple mantra, "We teach you how to learn so you can learn the rest of your life." Reflecting on her own experiences, Bijapurkar noted that her generation, which largely lacked formal economics training before the 1991 economic reforms, survived by continually learning.

"My generation should have been wiped out in 1991 (after economic reforms) as we learned no economics, and there was no need and I had a physics degree. Since we had no clue and the economy was closed and there were no ripples, we never really learned any of that stuff that we needed to know after 1991. How did a lot of people who were that set of generations actually survive? I suspect because they were taught how to learn so that they learned for the rest of their lives," she said at the gathering of top HR professionals.

"I don't think very smart people, left by themselves generations after generations, can make transitions. So since we cannot ensure the stability of the world, I think we can only ensure adaptability, learnability, the ability to think from first principles, and the fundamental foundations of business. We should collectively sort of raise the bar and not play up to students' beliefs that life begins and ends with placement," she said.

Citing an example of the pressure students face, she mentioned that one student shared how friends in college HR CO would say, "Don't come back without that multi-crore job," as they said their goodbyes. "But you have to understand that this is the end of the beginning, and it's not even the beginning of the end. It's gonna take a long time. As we say in brands, I think also with people, we say brands don't belong in the quadrangle of the marketplace. They belong in the canvas of life," she said.