sunrise on dark horizons: It started with marketing-but on popular Demand-MBA in NITK

To start off an MBA-Dilbert joke for you:

Well ours is a college of national importance, that has recently introduced MBA program. I guess the thought stemmed from the fact that NIT Trichy has done the same a couple of years earlier, and deemed universities are expected to churn new programs without considering the cost of infra, good faculty. There are significant number of queries generated on the blog with respect to MBA program in our college.

The problem with evaluating the same is that you would invariably want me to compare, at least judge on the basis of placement. But frankly I've little interest in placement system of our college, let alone going through MBA's.

So my evaluation strictly will tow the line of qualitative aspects. The MBA department is one fine but compact building of humanities department which also houses placement cell. The faculty is limited and apart from some black swan events tows the lines of books and all the nerdy stuff you might get in MBA theory.

At least as far as i know, prestigious college do some practical activities for the sake of it. I know this for a fact because the same faculty taught us various courses during our B.Tech program including Public Communications, Management and bla bla, Marketing, Economics, HR. The HODs play musical chairs, yes there are two. And apart from one proff who is also one of the HOD, there is no lecturer who hasn't illustrated us his teaching methodology. But a let down on faculty is not on unexpected lines, after all the course itself is a couple of years old.

But now i believe in calling a spade a spade esp. if i'm investing my time and space. If someone is looking for a MBA in NITs, he must have got not a good enough rank in comp-exams and you will have to pay the price in the current education setup. Mind you i also think MBA program is some over hyped money churning machine, and the practitioners only dent the chances of a company becoming a success.

For starting a bussines (and not just write complex-yet of no value reports, financial models for dooms in stock markets and pathetic marketing campaigns as we see on TV even for brands like Sony and of course jargon) you just have to know basic finance, sell what you believe in, market ie communicate to target group and not just sit in some well furnished room and speak Greek (the main problem is when you know their speak, then it sounds even more stupid and unproductive); tasks which even people with no formal education perform with aplomb.

For the classmates who know i wrote CAT, suffice to say there are a lot of strings attached and you do want to please few dear ones even with stuff that you might not like. So MBA program has given way for degree in business, in some world renowned colleges.

Only a week back i read a article in some newspaper supplement how the above mentioned criticism of MBA is not limited to this numbhead. The US market for MBAs is said in that article is towing the line of never going into the field, never knowing how actually things get done but limiting themselves to their spacious office spaces and conference rooms where they discuss "strategies" and form various models and projections. The prime fear of the author is that Indian MBA market is following on the same footsteps.

It is a pity that i started this post with a heading Marketing as it should be, but then i thought to give a brief about MBA at NITK and the whole thing just got out of hand like this. I guess it has lot to do with how we are opening a startup and when we pitched to some "expected-to-be-experts", they analyzed us on our education background and the lack of MBA. For now the true marketer will have to wait for another post.