THE CHALICE OF CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY

AS THE EDTECH REVOLUTION MAKES QUALITY HIGHER EDUCATION AFFORDABLE AND ACCESSIBLE TO ALL, ALTERS TRADITIONAL STRUCTURES OF THE MBA, AND CREATES NEW MARKETS ON ITS VALUE-COST TRADE-OFF, WHAT’S AT STAKE FOR TRADITIONAL B-SCHOOLS?

- BINU PAUL

WHILE PURSUING HIS MBA at Harvard Business School in the early 2000s, Ashwin Damera mingled with a diverse bunch of classmates across many clubs and student groups. After graduation, he became an entrepreneur and is currently building Eruditus, an ed-tech upskilling start-up that offers executive-level courses across 80 countries. The idea for his first startup—online travel agency Travelguru—came in runners-up at a Harvard Business Plan contest.

Like him, many of Damera’s classmates went on to become founders and lead large organisations. The more notable names include Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO of ad tech InMobi; Alexander Samwer of German startup incubator Rocket Internet; Jeremy Stoppelman, Co-Founder and CEO of review website Yelp; and Rishad Premji, Chairman of Wipro.

But despite co-founding an ed-tech start-up, Damera knows he would have had neither this critical social capital nor a strong network of peers, professors and alumni if he had pursued an online course. “The benefits of doing an MBA from a top B-school are the intellectual capital, brand capital and social capital. Intellectual capital, one can argue, is somewhat similar online, though it isn’t possible to do hundreds of case studies online. A brand is often offered to online graduates, too. But the social capital of who you meet and who inspires you, all of that is very difficult to replicate in an online world,” he says. And that’s what gave B-schools an aura of impregnability. So far.