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ALL YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MBA

Ask any MBA aspirant why he wants to do MBA and the answers follow predictable lines. Everyone wants to work in a multinational company and earn a fat salary, or is preparing for it since friends are into it. Few actually know what to expect from the profession. Almost everybody talks of a cousin or friend who has made it big in some company or the other.

It is no wonder that the average student and even people in other professions and jobs have caught the MBA bug. When making money has become the central objective of life, who wants to be stuck in a career that offers less?

Lack of information and counselling results in young people applying in hordes whether they have the aptitude or not, and the mushrooming of sub-standard institutes catering to the demand, which provide MBA degrees that can only be described as worthless. Very often, a person finds that the MBA degree does not get the promised job in the multinational and frustrations arise. Moreover, if every MBA were to be taken by the multinationals, who would work for the Indian companies, some of which are as good as, or even better, than any multinational?

The Management Education Scenario
Management education in the country can roughly be divided into four groups. At the top are the reputed institutes and some university departments which have maintained the high quality of their education. The second rung institutes are those started by industrial houses, which offer some surety of a job after the course. The third rung are university departments which have not been able to impart quality education but can provide jobs in regional industrial groups. The fourth rung are those institutes which have neither the advantage of low fees of a university nor the backing of an industrial house. In recent times, a number of academics, retired people, politicians and others have started such institutes which remain essentially money making devices.

Which institutes should one, apply for? Obviously, the competition for the top institutes is great, since eveybody wants to do the MBA from one. There is no surety of getting in. It is, therefore better to spread risks and apply for institutes which are lower down also. One should not apply to many of them, since each application costs about Rs 1000 and applying to all would mean spending a small fortune. Depending on one's ability and confidence, one should select one or two institutes from each group and apply accordingly. Of course, the prospects and jobs decrease as one goes down to the lower rung institutes.

Students also have a problem in assessing an institute. There are several yardsticks available and one should not go by the beautifully printed prospectus that they have. Some important considerations are: whether the institute has a permanent faculty and whether the faculty is professionally qualified. Many institutes depend on contractual, part time faculty members. The commitment of the part-time teacher is never total. Others depend on researcher-type teachers who have no idea how real businesses operate. What is required, instead, are people who have a practical orientation and experience.

One should also check which jobs the institute is able to get for its graduates. Usually, some students geet good jobs using their own contacts, which the institute then prints in its prospectus. It is important to see how industry rates the institute.

Unfortunately, the student has no way of getting this information. There is no rating agency and each institute makes tall claims about its degree. The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has given its approval to many institutes without going into their merits. This has caused great problems for students who have no yardstick to go by except the AICTE approval, which does not mean a thing. The situation is further complicated by the fact that some are worthless institutes; recently some of them have been sent notices by the MRTP? Such institutes not only have very high fee, but use the 'NRI Quota' to circumvent the law on donations and only take in students who can pay more. The degrees awarded by them are quite useless.

Training for the corporate world.
But these are not questions that bother the MBA aspirant. Clearing the entrance test and joining the course are the immediate hurdles and it is commonly believed that once a person gets in he will most certainly become an MBA. Contrasted with courses for Chartered Accountant or Company Secretary, where some people get caught in the trap of rrepeating groups of papers, the MBA is a safe option.

Not surprisingly, the sense of achievement in the MBA student is very high. The course becomes one huge ego trip. Many students do not spend as much time on their training as they should, thinking that the MBA stamp will take them through jobs. This is only partially true. No company takes a person for his label alone, but for what he can contribute. The MBA is chosen for his professionalism and his training, his skills and his ability to manage. The two years of training are therefore best spent in acquiring these skills.

How are these skills acquired? First, it requires gathering knowledge and insight. Many students are used to their undergraduate classes where notes are made and some questions are mugged up near the exams, which is enough to see them through. The management course is unlike any of those courses. Application of knowledge and not mere bookish knowledge is required. That is why the good institutes by emphasis on case discussions and group assignments.

The student must learn everything that may be required in business situations. A good personality should be developed. Unfortunately, many lower-rung institutes and university departments do not have facilities for personality development or teachers trained in group methods. The result is a stunted MBA which no good company would liketo touch. It is thus important to do the course from a reputed institute.

The bad institutes do not insist on hard work simply because they are not committed. There is emphasis on partying and having a good time. Many institutes in Delhi and elsewhere are known for such activities. To hide their shortcomings, they have collaborations with fancy sounding foreign universities and introduce exotic courses like yoga, spiritualism and "Eastern Management". One institute advertises a golf course and swimming pool on its campus. The corporate sector is usually not impressed by such gimmicks.

Many students come to grief when they find that their expensive diplomas are not good enough to get them jobs. In many institutes, the toppers get the good jobs but the average students have to accept lower offers. Youngsters who believe that merely the MBA label is a ticket to the good life face serious adjustment problems and frequent change of jobs. The MBA, in fact, should be treated only as a time to prepare for the corporate world.

Qualities to be acquired
A good institute, on the other hand, puts pressure on the students to be on their toes and updated in their subjects at all times. Graduates report that in certain semesters they get very little sleep, so hard is the pressure to perform. Tests are announced at the last moment when the students are preparing to sleep, so that a person must be updated in all subjects at all times. Case studies enhance the applicability of concepts and theory to real life situations. This results in a person acquiring professional competence. Ultimately, the MBA must be seen as preparation for entry into the corporate sector.

A competitive spirit must also be developed. A corporate career is not one for comfortable jobs and the sooner a person acquires the competitive spirit, the better off he will be.

Since any job in a company will require a person to make presentations and to convince others, a person must learn presentation skills and be a natural leader. Ability to take good decisions under pressure is also required. Many skills, such as quantitative analysis, are learnt from books but analysis of business situations is also required. This is done through case studies.

The summer training is another method of using the knowledge in real life situations. The training should be used as an opportunity to prove oneself and some meaningful work should be done. Professional competence is rewarded when the summer training results in an offer of a permanent job on completion of the degree. In this way, many students find jobs during their summer training, much before the actual completion of their course.

A student must keep a level head even though everybody he meets says that clearing the entrance test was a big achievement. The real achievement is to come after two years when jobs are required. The years in the institute should be utilised to learn the skills in the best possible way. If the student is not busy enough, the MBA degree will be worthless even though it may have a fancy name.

Managing Expectations
One of the myths that students have is that they will become senior managers the moment they complete the MBA. Certain companies have found that expectations and ambitions of MBAs are difficult to meet and they have taken policy decisions not to hire fresh MBAs. Though the MBA is a coveted degree, it becomes important to keep a level head and keep one's expectations low. According to the hype, an MBA is a senior manager, but fresh MBAs are usually taken at the level of management trainees. Initially, some low and tedious work may have to be done.

If a student is not reconciled to this, frustrations are bound to arise. Job hopping is common, which ultimately hurts the career of the youngster. Further, the company too has its expectations from the management graduate to whom it is paying a high salary. The second part of the article will describe what is expected of the MBA in a company. Somewhere, the expectations have to be reconciled for the high growth career of management to be a success.

Opportunities in Management
Rapid expansion of Industries in India has opened new vistas for excellent opportunities of careers in management. New Economic Policy of liberalisation and decontrols has increased the demand for managerial personnel in the corporate sector. Advent of multinational companies, which has just begun, may further increase the quest of the industrial sector in all fields of management like Finance, Production, Marketing, Personnel and Administration.
The careers in management offer one of the best remuneration package in the country, particularly in the private sector. Recent decision of the Government to raise the upper limit of monthly salary to the managers to Rs 50,000 has made careers in management even more attractive. In addition to best of the salaries offered by this career, it also offers outstanding developmental opportunities to enable the competent and dynamic managers to rise to the level of Chief-executive. Several Indian professionals today are working as Managing Directors in many multi-nationals. Management professionals from India are also in good demand in international market. Private sector today offers rapid advancement to result-oriented professionals. Excellent perks are offered which may include free accommodation free conveyance/attractive conveyance allowance, CPF, leave travel concession, medical allowance/reimbursement etc.

Those who prefer Public Sector Undertakings (PSU), may join these undertakings at several levels. The managerial hierarchy and pay-structure in most of the PSU's is pre-determined and also includes some perks, though not as attractive as offered by the private sector.

Areas in Management Services
Marketing, Finance, Production and Personnel are the four major areas in management with each having several sub-branches. Marketing Management includes sales, purchase, international marketing (exports-imports), advertising, marketing strategy, materials management, consumers' behaviour, market development and research. Financial Management includes all the aspects relating to finances, investments, financing decisions, portfolio management, project management, working capital management, international financial management, etc. Production Management takes care of Production methodology, costing, operations research and quality control etc. Personnel Management deals with the most complicated aspect i.e. management. It looks after the areas of Human Resource Development (HRD), recruitment, training, management-union relations, labour and personnel policies, organisation behaviour, management of change and general administration.

A degree of Master in Business Administration (MBA) is considered to be the gateway to careers in management. While choosing the area of specialisation in management, the candidates must gauge their aptitude for a particular aspect of management. Candidates with commerce background usually go in for Financial Management and the technical graduates with science or engineering degrees usually choose Production Management. Rest of the candidates choose Marketing Management or Personnel Management, depending upon their aptitudes and flairs.

 MBA Degree
Master of Business Administration is normally considered to be the basic and ideal post-graduate qualification for taking up a good and rewarding career in management. As per one estimate, every year about 10,000 MBAs are churned out by Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and a host of other universities and recognised institutes/deemed universities. A candidate with a good MBA degree finds no problem in getting a good job and freshers are usually inducted as Management Trainees for one to two years, before getting absorbed in regular scales. After a few years of experience, MBAs may choose the job of their own liking at very attractive terms.

Several institutes/universities also offer post-graduate diplomas of one to two-year duration on Business Management, Marketing Management, HRD, Personnel Management and Labour Welfare, Basic Finance, Financial Management, Materials Management, Operations Management, etc. But as a matter of rule, MBA degree is considered to be ideal by the job-seekers as well as the employers. Diplomas also assist in finding good openings, provided these are supplemented with some relevant experience.

(a) Admission: One of the toughest steps in this direction is to get admission for MBA degree. All graduates with minimum 50 per cent marks are eligible for admission. The admission is through an entrance test, which offers very tough competition. Some universities keep some seats reserved for "internal" students who graduate from the same university, apart from the prescribed reservations for scheduled caste/scheduled tribe candidates.
The most prestigious degree of MBA is the one awarded by four Institutes of Management (IIMs) located at Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Bangalore and Lucknow. In addition, some universities of repute also carry out MBA programme. Some of these are Delhi University, Bombay University, Madras University, Calcutta University, Punjab University, Aligarh Muslim University, Banaras Hindu University, Allahabad University, Baroda University, Mysore University, Cochin University, Patna University, Ranchi University, Magadh University, Jodhpur University, Jammu University, Bhopal University etc. In addition to the above, there are several other universities and institutes like Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Tata Institue of Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Rural Management and Institute of Management which also conduct MBA programmes.

(b) CAT By IIMs: For admission to MBA programme, IIMs hold a Common Admission Test (CAT) every year, generally in the month of December. The test is conducted on all-India basis at several centres, covering almost the entire country. A notification regarding CAT usually appears in the month of September in several national newspapers as well as in the "Employment News". The dates of commencement of academic session are different for all the four Institutes. CAT is of 2-hour duration. It is objective type (multiple choice) and includes questions on English language, analytical ability, reading comprehension, data interpretation and reasoning ability. This year CAT is to be held on December 12.

In addition to the written test, the candidates may also be tested in the following:
(i) group discussion; (ii) leadership tests; (iii) case study; and (iv) personal interview.

The thrust of the CAT is to choose the candidates with high intelligence quotient, leadership qualities, clear understanding and good expression. The number of seats vary from 100 to 180 and the IIMs have reservation for SC/ST candidates @ 15 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.

(c) Entrance test by Universities: The selection of candidates for MBA programme is made through entrance test by the universities, depending upon the number of seats and quantum of competition. The entrance test is for two to three hour duration. Some of the universities have more than one papers. The paper usually is objective type (multiple choice) in nature and covers areas like reasoning, reading comprehension, quantitative aptitude, data interpretation, general awareness, business communication skills etc. The exact layout of the question paper varies in different universities.

Part-time/Correspondence Course
Several universities like University of Delhi, Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, Gujarat, Osmania and Punjab hold part-time course for MBA. Part-time programmes are designed to last for 5 to 7 semesters and the classes are held in the evening. Apart from requirement of a good bachelor's degree, part-time programmes also require some experience at supervisory level. While part-time courses are available only to the candidates belonging to a particular city/town where such university is located, MBA courses offered through correspondence/self-instructional method are designed to assist the candidates located at far flung areas. Some universities like Punjabi University, Patiala and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) offer such courses. IGNOU is one of the premier institutions which offers MBA programme through a nation-wide network of its 170 study centres. Internationally recognized as a centre of excellence for studies, IGNOU offers a 5-semester MBA programme and also proovides the facility of counselling. This course is particularly useful for the officers of Armed Forces who retire at relatively younger age, and also to those Government servants who wish to seek careers in managerial cadres by seeking premature retirement.

An advantage to do MBA from IGNOU is that the Candidates who, for any reasons, cannot complete the entire programme and are able to pass only a few subjects/papers, are awarded diplomas like Diploma in Management, Post Graduate (PG) Deiploma in Business Management, PG Diploma in Marketing Management , PG Diploma in HRD, PG Diploma in Financial Management, etc, depending on the number of papers passed by the candidates. Another advantage is that the number of seats for MBA programme is determined study-centre-wise which offers a large number of seats at all India level.

The candidates seeking admission in this programme offered by IGNOU must have completed 25 years of age and must have at least three years' experience in the supervisory capacity. There is, however, no upper age limit. The admission is made entirely on the basis of marks obtained in the entrance test which is for two-hour duration and has about 100 objective type questions on comprehension, reasoning, English language, general awareness, data interpretation, quantitative aptitude etc.