The question is moot particularly today — does it require you to have an engineering degree to become an MBA?
To answer that question, it is better to first ask these two questions — upon graduating, what exactly is it that MBAs are expected to do? And what is it that they actually end up doing?
Let’s answer the second question first. Most guys from premier B-schools end up being consultants, advisors and analysts. The top three verticals that Indian MBA students preferred (2012) were consulting (76 per cent), technology/ IT/ ITeS (44 per cent) and finance (33 per cent)
Where are the doers here? Remember most folks who are in the major B-schools have an engineering degree. What’s happening? Well, it looks like a field job, a shop floor gig has increasingly become a big No-No for most engineering graduates who apparently prefer a nice air-conditioned, and comfortable city office (like many of us anyway).
Now back to the first question: what are MBAs expected to do? Well, the commonest answer is that they are expected to solve business problems. Now, to solve business problems, what you really need most is common sense and the ability to think innovatively and smartly. Does that require an engineering degree? For me, a B.Com from a Chennai college with a PGDM from a WIMWI (well known institute of management in western India), this question was, by-and-large, a no-brainer. Earlier, the engineers used to come after doing a five-year course while the regular grads did a mere three-year degree. Virtually 90-plus per cent of them post their MBA took up jobs leading to careers that had nothing to do with their original engineering degree. And I always used to think that this gave folks like me a two-year career edge.
Over the last couple of decades, everybody and his bhaanja-batheeja has become, by default, an engineer. It’s almost like if you didn’t get into a proper degree college, you went into some random engineering college since IT-shyTy- BPO, and now the new darling on the block, e-commerce, required a default BE/ BTech if you even wanted to write the test (almost like the PSU banks needed you to have some basic degree to write the bank clerk exams).
Just another degree
Today, look at the situation. There are some 5,000 engineering colleges in India, of which barely 2-5 per cent of them really offer what can be considered a quality education supported by good faculty and facilities. The job market has grown but not enough to support such a deluge of engineers in the fields of manufacturing, IT, other branches of technology or infrastructure. The bulk of the new crop of engineers are the ‘air-conditioned’ types, meaning they don’t want to do field /outdoor/ tough jobs. Like the plain vanilla graduate of yore (remember the movies where the mother proudly says, Beta BA Pass hai?), and the Matric pass before him, many of today’s B.Tech/ BEs are taking up jobs unrelated to their discipline or are unemployed.
With the bulk of the academically inclined going to engineering as the default graduate programme of choice, it automatically follows that most of the aspirants to MBA programmes in India also are engineers and most MBA graduates from the top B-schools are engineers. They are just a reflection of the qualification of the population and not of the intrinsic capabilities required in an MBA.
Not in sync with reality
A key aspect often forgotten by a lot of folks is the ‘people’ element. Whatever the ‘perfect’ system that is created, it is finally us humans who make it work. Or break it. Mostly all engineering courses in India completely ignore such ‘soft’ subjects and almost entirely focus on the hard, technical subjects. The perspective is that it is only the latter that is ‘important’ and thus ‘essential’. Little does the poor engineering graduate know that reality is largely about managing ambiguous situations. For example, it’s documented that 70 per cent of all successful attacks on computer networks were carried out by employees and insiders.
Imagine the plight of the poor network engineer who ignores this at his peril. Now this is something that a good management professional needs to proactively understand, and for that an engineering degree is really not the answer.
Our regimented, outdated and blinkered professional education system ensures that we are rapidly rendered incompetent in the matter of simple and rather basic life skills.
Most electrical engineers would likely need to call in an electrician to fix a fuse while most civil engineers would need a handyman even to figure out what kind of shelf to make to store their prescribed books. What we have ended up creating in most colleges, and especially in professional courses, like engineering is an army of young people who are capable of absorbing and regurgitating a whole load of conceptual information but largely incapable of solving problems for themselves and deciding on what needs to be done and how.
After all, at the end of the day, that is what MBAs in jobs, in positions of responsibility are supposed to do — take decisions.
References:
http://knogimmicks.com/2014/01/07/why-engineers-trump-mba-students-in-entrepreneurship-2/
http://www.onlinecollege.org/2012/11/29/10-advanced-degrees-that-are-better-than-mba-today/
http://www.economist.com/whichmba/think-twice
http://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2013/09/19/life-after-mba-from-iim-iit-indian-institutes/