In Need Of A Makeover – The Industry-Academia Engagement

The MBA programs in India still teach students to draw still life whereas the world outside is moving at 24 frames per second – it is time to transform the MBA offering and provide a new look to the industry-academia engagement.

- Abhijit Bhaduri

The MBA degree was created for a different world. It was the mid-sixties when having an MBA first began to catch the imagination of the middle class aspirants. It was the guarantee of a good life. But that was also when the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 was 33 years. By 1990, organization’s lifespans had shrunk to 20 years. By 2026 the lifespan of a company would be down to 14 years.

About 50 percent of the S&P 500 will be replaced over the next 10 years. Already, yesterday’s aspirational employers like US Steel, Dell, and the New York Times have been replaced by Facebook, Under Armor and Netflix.

Meanwhile in the Business Schools…

The employers have to rely on shortcuts to decide which degree best prepares someone for a career in business. The MBA program was the perfect answer. XLRI – India's oldest business management school was founded in 1949. IIM Calcutta was the first of the IIMs to be set up in 1961. Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta were the three cities which had IIMs. As industries flourished, so did the B-Schools.

The two years of business education shot up the worth of any graduate in the job market. Employers could not hire enough of the MBAs. The B Schools started to “ration” out the MBAs. The students would choose which firms would be given the Day One status to come to offer jobs to the graduating MBAs. Soon a pecking order would emerge in the early nineties. It was the Big 4 consulting companies or the Investment Banks that would get the pick of the lot. Heads of HR would declare achieving Day 1 status on Campus as their biggest achievement. The students got more ambitious. Some campus offered Day Zero a day before Day One for campus placements.