B-schools – How can you improve?
Situation
MBA schools are receiving a lot of flak lately thanks to the recession. But are there any ways by which this situation can be improved. Why haven’t any schools come back in retaliation to what is being said. Do they know that this negative propaganda will have no effect whatsoever on their attractiveness? It is yet another storm that will pass.
What happens
Some schools meanwhile will introduce some new program, new curriculum, or a new subject that will promise to expose the real world implications of their decisions and analysis and make them employee (I should say ‘World’) friendly. Once students take that class they will have only one thing to say – I have no idea what was taught. The material was great, the profs exemplary, but there is a void in what we did and what we could have learnt.
My opinion
I have been part of a b-school that has changed its curriculum (slightly) recently to accommodate more real world learning and applying multi-disciplinary skills. I cannot doubt the efficacy of the idea but I am still not completely satisfied in my experience. Here are some of my thoughts of what I think an ‘up’coming b-school should do to make itself not only well known among practitioners but also make sure that their students are learning (getting the real education vis-à-vis getting a job and making money:
1. Hire fewer students – But really good students. I have spoken to lot of my friends in my school and other schools where they complain about lost opportunities and not enough jobs. By looking at their performance in school, in previous jobs it seems quite evident that they are missing the ‘thing’ that big employers are looking for. All that bought them to the school was a great GMAT score, some nice referrals, and doctored application essays. It is important for schools to practice what they preach – think long term. Hire those that can learn, can deliver and not just provide hollow diversity.
2. Make 80 hours of community service mandatory – Yes, I mean it. Students who have lived the community life are the ones who have a good chance of identifying with the situation outside. Why do I say this? Because I have observed it. These folks meet people with much different outlook, perspective, and disposition to life and problems. Those who learn and inculcate from such experiences are the ones who really perform.
3. One real world project per semester – Absolutely mandatory. There are lots of companies working on small, not-so-important projects throughout the year where an MBA student can be placed for a semester. The end product of that course should be a detailed report on how the student performed, an executive summary of the job, and a presentation of the deliverables. Such opportunities give a practical experience to each student in networking, developing real world experience in the field they have never worked in, and presentation. And the employers get their work done for free and possibly their next rock star recruit.
4. Incentivize students – Have awards for blogging, for community work, for going beyond the call of duty, for making a difference to someone’s life, for highest score in each subject, and so on… These awards will force us to work towards a goal, towards reaching heights that we lazily forget about in the daily grill of the b-school experience.’
5. Report on contribution to B-School – How many of you have answered the essay question – What do you bring to the table? How will you contribute towards your school’s community? – And how many of you have gone beyond the obvious contributions (diversity, enthusiastic team member, radical outlook, different perspective, and etc.) and described the fantastic ways (community leader, organizing events, and etc.) you will go about contributing. Its time baby. Now when you graduate you will need to write a report of your contributions, match it up with your essay and provide necessary explanations. If this is done, people will be honest, will be pushed to give their best to the school and just have something to carry back.
In the interest of keeping the size of this post just this big, I will start a new post when I get the next idea.
