Mumbai-based B-school NMIMS, among the top ten in the country, is reviewing the management programme it offers. This review of its curriculum, its Vice-Chancellor Rajan Saxena ( Click this to view exclusive video ) says, is done every five years to overhaul the courses and keep them in sync with industry requirements.
In an interview to BLoC, Saxena says there is a structured mechanism for the reviews. “After the second or third year, we have a mid-term review to bridge the gaps. For the five-year review we bring in industry stalwarts and have a rendezvous where we include our international partners in the discussions. That gives us an understanding of where management education is heading and what skill-sets are needed before we go back to the drawing board. The curriculum we developed in 2009 is now being reviewed,” he explains.
Industry linkages
Saxena says NMIMS has always had strong industry linkages right from its inception, which has enabled the B-school to stay current with industry requirements.
“Over the past five years there has been a substantial change in technology, student behaviour and industry expectations. So, we could look at completely recasting or redesigning our courses. If required, we will throw out whatever we had. We did that in 2009; we threw out many courses and created a new programme that has stood us in good stead for the past many years,” he adds.
The NMIMS VC says that the way management education was being imparted underwent a shift after the global slowdown of 2008. In earlier days, he explains, companies would recruit candidates from B-schools, put them through a management training scheme and then induct them into the workplace.
Global slowdown
“After 2008, this scenario just shifted. As the economy was going through a meltdown, the issue of survivability was predominant and firms didn’t have the time to train the students and get them to deliver. The pressure on schools was to develop graduates who would deliver results even from day one. If I look at the focus of our programmes, it’s now more geared towards building up skill-sets required by businesses,” explains Saxena.
Another dimension is that execution skills became relevant and important. Companies now don’t want graduates who can only plan and strategise, they also want those who can execute.
Execution skills
“Much of the time, right up to the higher levels of management, a lot of managerial time goes into execution. At the MD level, execution is only about 20 per cent of one’s time, but in the first 15 years of a management graduate’s corporate life, he or she has to deliver by executing ideas and plans. From that point of view we built specific courses on execution, not only as a conceptual exercise, but making it actually hands-on, using simulations that gave students an understanding of how to take a decision and its consequences,” elaborates Saxena.
NMIMS also focused on improving the inter-personal skills of students, from managing diversity in a work situation to dealing with someone at a dinner table.
“These are small, finer aspects we built into the programme. We also develop the social sensitivities of students with specific programmes, where every student in a class is mandated to spend three to four weeks on the field in an identified social cause and work with an NGO, analyse it, conceptualise and then come back with a recommendation on what else the NGO can do to improve delivery in the areas of their work,” says the VC.