Is MBA education loosing its sheen?
In 1988 there were just about three colleges in NCR, India, offering two year full time management education / programs. All were government run colleges. In last 20 years the number has increased to around 400 odd colleges in NCR, offering MBA or its equivalent programs. Most of these colleges are privately run or run by private trusts. The number of management career opportunities has also increased tremendously. However the growth of these opportunities is in not in tendom with the mushrooming growth of privately run B-Schools. And most B-Schools are unable to provide even the basic management education. Most of these colleges are unable to satisfy the needs and expectations of the aspiring candidates looking for exciting management jobs. The whole process of running these colleges is not transparent, making the whole process of management education opaque and misleading. The issue assumes great importance given the fact that most students in B category B-Schools get admissions after taking unviable loans or study at the cost of hard earned money or life time savings of their parents without reaslizing the ‘cost & benefit’ workability of such move. It is ironic that even the MBA coaching institutes preparing the students for admissions to these colleges are unable to guide them to right B-Schools and many times money is passed on by the B category colleges to these coaching institutes to divert the students to these ‘not so good’ B-Schools.
The problem lies with both the aspirants and B-Schools. Both are unable to understand their correct approach, roles and responsibilities. Result is bad education and disillusionment among the management graduates who are unable to get the jobs of their dreams. The candidates expect too much from the B-Schools. Without realizing their own aptitude, they choose to join a B-School assuming that a PGDM degree is a sure shot ticket to the corporate board room. They are unable to understand that they need to build right attitude and management skills on their own more than what a B-School can give. On the other hand, A-Category Schools like IIMs (which are mostly governent run) already take their input of reflective students through strong competitive examinations and aptitude tests. These students are already so good that they can amplify their management training to their own advantage with most of their own efforts. Most B-category B-Schools tend to fill their own number of seats to make their business model work, causing great strain on learning and to the job market. The situation is getting more difficult by the day with every now and then new B-Schools entering the scene having no proper faculty and education model. It may be noted that if there are so many B-Schools offering world class management education as claimed by them all over India, why Indian B-Schools are not able to attract foreign students much like it happens in US, in spite of the fact that average fee structure of an Indian B-School is a fraction of a typical world class B-school fees abroad.
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The Indian government policy itself is skewed and is less ‘thought of’ and talks of a PhD degree for a B-School professor elligibility, while it is a well known fact that most good faculty coming from industry background and which is best suited for management training and have good management educational credential (minus a not so south after PhD degree in industry) are unlikely to be a PhD candidate. In the Indian conditions, a PhD candidate is generally not likely to be a an industry savvy person. Here itself the world class management education concept of Indian government suffers the case of India really becoming a world class management educational hub (not to talk of Ivy League colleges). We are just about copying what is the model in US without giving the results of a US education market and not undetrstanding the Indian reality.
On the students part, their expectations from a B-School is much like what they expect from a MCA or a CA degree. They expect to get a paper degree of PGDM which must ensure them a guaranteed and good corporate job. Just in their second year after they are back from summer internship in a typical PGDM program, they realize their mistakes and get depressed knowing how demanding is the industry to fulfill their dreams and just a paper degree only may not give them what they had been looking for all these years. They are unable to put in the kind of skills and attitude in place which can land them a good corporate job. These facts were beautifully portrayed in the recent Bollywood movie – Three Idiots.
However the fact remains that India is growing and growing faster than most countries of the world. India needs managers with right inputs and skill sets. Off late, Indian government is trying hard to put thing right and to the advantage of the Indian students. Already it is true that if anyone has confidence and inputs required by a corporate job, admission to a management program of his choice is not an issue. Not like a medical degree where it is still a big issue to get admission or it is too expensive.
Now the need of the hour is to be extremely careful about choosing the right B-School and right career strategy to build required skills. It is important to find the right person to guide and coach a candiate for a good management career. A student can just not afford to believe anyone or a coaching center into a wrong B-School. Which means a business like attitude is required even before entering a B-School. B-Schools are like professional training centers which guide the candidates to build their own skills in their own ways. A good B-School is expected to provide the right environment, good faculty, events and ways to build rare skills and business like attitude. A B-School can not guarantee a student a corporate job if he or she does not have the desired skills at the end of the program. Even if the candidate lands up a job in the campus interviews, if the right attitude and skills are not there, industry does not carry liabilities in a hyper competitive environment and soon ejects the candidate.
A B-School is not like a cineplex where one needs a five star environment to see a movie called PGDM. Therefore it is not so important how the campus looks like or how the class rooms are furnished. Most important part of any B-School is the quality of its faculty (with industry experience and not an academic PhD in any discreet discipline), nature of events and industry exposure provided.
Online Education Eradicates Illiteracy all Across the Globe
The impact of computer can be seen in every respective field either in business or jobs. The computer has brought several changes in various fields. Now one can communicate with other by internet via mail, chat or webcam. The education has brought revolutionary change in educational fields. The education with the help of internet based training program has open door for . The online form of education has helped in reaching education to every niche of world with the help of computer connected with internet connections. The electronic form of education has eradicated illiteracy and work for better in economic growth and improving infrastructure. The online form of education features electronically supported learning and training. The curriculum is simple and comprehensive and education approach is possible through modern devices and latest gadgets. The content of learning is delivered via internet, intranet or extranet, audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM in the form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio.
The online educations courses can be delivered by web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classroom opportunities and digital collaboration. The education is supported by electronically supported learning via internet, intranet audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM. The material is available in the form of text, image, animation, video and audio. One can attend orientation classes or watch training program conducted by virtual instructor. The advancement in technology has brought rapidly change in education and now one can gain pick comprehensive learning program available in online education colleges according to their conveyance or need. The candidate can acquire desire education of famous university with the help of online form of education. The global form of education has solved out the barriers of education of remote locations. Now they can gain knowledge and attend virtual classes and take help of world class faculty via mail or text chat message or other means of social networking sites.
The courses offer multiple options to choose or select. One can do management or complete their engineering degree or diploma by online university. The online education has made possible for getting education of secondary school or higher qualification. One can get job all over the world with the help of online degree courses as it contains value and recognized all across the world. For professionals, online degree offer opportunity for better career options. The employee can improve their job profile or can bring changes in it. They can get promotions with degree of higher qualification. As earning an online education degrees would not bring any barriers in working profile, same time you got degree of higher education while working. So one can feel that such degree give learning while earning. Also it add bonanza in profile as experience keep on persisting with degree educations. The professional can bring improvement in job profile and can gain promotions in designations and increment in salary. As individual growth counts for nation development so country can improve their educational structure and count economic growth.
Language Education: grammar training ineffective and rather harmful
Did you know that the average student learning a foreign language spends more time dwelling on the correct gramatical rules than on actually just seaking the language? This may just be the undoing of his or her language skills.
The problem with this: it is not only about the most ineffective way of language training, some of these elements such as translations and grammar drill are outright harmful.
Before we get into the details, please consider this: how did you learn to walk? All by yourself I believe and further you might agree that nowhere in the world there is a pediatrician or pedagogue who would advocate special walking instructions and drills for babies and toddlers (unless they were disabled). Likewise we all know that children learn their native language automatically just by listening and gradually communicating with people who are more advanced than they. By the age of six a normally developped child knows about 100,000 words in their native language if you count all word forms, e.g. go -> went, brother -> brethren, may -> might etc. Even a professor who later teaches that language as his best foreign language will hardly ever surpass such a six year old which you can easily check by asking him or her for e.g. a list of thirty types of tree or thirty species of birds, or if he knows the games and toys such child usually plays with in his native language and is accustomed to name.
So we may safely say that nature’s normal way of acquiring a language is the best, simply the most effective way and that all other methods lag miles behind. While there are a many fun ways to learn a language, they’re still not as effective as the simple way babies acquire their first. But there are certain widely employed methods that are outrright harmful and one of them is grammar training.
Did you ever reflect on grammar when acquiring or using your native language until the age of six? Not really, most people whose parents are accomplished speakers just pick up their parents style and vocabulary. The most important thing though is that we have certain areas in our brains that are trained to distill rules from repeating patterns, such as past tense or the plural “s” as in manner -> manners, fan -> fans, can – cans etc. This process is automatical and the correct “grammatical” rule becomes woven into the language usage pattern and then works without thinking.
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But if you force anyone, esp. children, to reflect upon those rules, worse even to learn them up front, you will destroy that rule building process with the end result that your child may never learn that second language fluently but may always behave like a self-conscious and slow speaker who tries to first access his/her grammatical “rule book” that is by now saved in a completely different part of their brain.
This is known since decades, however, modern school currikcula and teacher training does not reflect that knowledge. Rather children are given assignments in their native language and challenged to translate into the target foreign language, whereby they are asked to apply those cherished rules. This is part of a series of articles where we will also cover the harm that’s done by forcing children to translate early between languages. Let’s just quote a few sources on grammar drill and its effects:
“Why Doesn’t Grammar Correction Work? The first reason why writing class grammar feedback doesn’t work is that it treats only the surface appearance of grammar and not with the way language develops … Secondly, learning grammar in a second language is a complex and gradual process which occurs both developmentally and hierarchically (some items are acquired before others). Compounding this is the fact that the learning of linguistic items does not occur in a linear fashion, that the learning curve for an item is full of valleys and peaks, progress and regressions.”
(Grammar Correction in ESL/EFL Writing Classes May Not Be Effective, Ronald Gray, Beijing Language and Culture University (Beijing, China))
The author then continues: “So what should a L2 writing teacher do? The quickest and most effective solution would be for writing instructors to simply stop making grammar corrections.” And take note: “In short, teachers need to train themselves to set aside their red pens and examine ideas and see what students are trying to say instead of simply looking for grammatical errors.”
“When you are just learning to speak a new language, learning grammar rules is not only senseless, but harmful as far as developing your ability to fluently express yourself. … In most cases, our speech is formed by communication, the quantity and quality of studied literature, education, or simply our surrounding environment. During systematic simultaneous repetition, one develops an inner sense of the language, and the ability to imitate correct pronunciation of words and phrases.” (Language Bridge Method)