Global Business School: Analysing the Management Education Value Chain
Management education has evolved through ages form being a personal exchange of ideas to becoming an industry in the modern era. Management education has now developed itself into a structured institution and is continuously evolving according to the market need and demand.
One of the primary reasons for professionals to take up a management course is to upgrade themselves for better career opportunities. This search for better career and professional opportunities are only realised when the students gets a job offer from a corporate or a business house. These corporate / business houses have particular eligibility factors or requirements which compromise of both academic and nonacademic factors. As the market for management education is growing so is the competition growing due to the more number of graduates every year. This in some regions has led to development of regulators, who are now standardising the delivery of the management courses, so as to maintain a particular level of quality but the same in turn is proving as a hindrance since the standards set by the regulatory bodies are not always in line with the market demand and the dynamic of the corporate world.
One needs to be sensitive to the fact the corporates/ the business community who are the major absorbers of management graduates, have now become an indispensable part of the whole management education value system..................
Corporate Market
Though the corporate houses in the region were growing at a healthy pace, yet along with time the market was getting more and more demanding. The market was expecting that the management graduates should become more and more competent in the way they understand and handle a practical business situation. The management graduates should not only know the basics of a management but..............
Global Business School: The Institute
Global Business School traces its roots to the establishment of its sister’s institute during the postindependence era of India, and was inaugurated by one of the leading leaders of the country. From a Greenfield project, the school has become one of the best B-school of the region..........
The Programme
The Global Masters in Business Management (GMBM) course was a two-year programme with specializations in: Supply Chain Management, Marketing Management and Finance. The programme was structured in four semesters, two of which was to be completed in the parent campus and the next two semesters to be completed in a foreign campus of the same institute............
Student Background
This course generally did not require a work experience and was open to all graduates who had work experience of 0 to 3 years. A typical student of the G-MBM course had a minimum of 6 months and for the present batch the maximum work experience was of 26 months. There were students from diversified professional and educational background: Civil Engineering.............
Teaching Methodology
The institute had an education delivery structure wherein the institute maintained very less number of full-time professors and there was a full year plan for the visiting professors, who formed the most important part of the service delivery system. The percentage estimate of the visiting faculty in the institute’s parent campus was 60% and in its foreign campus was around 90%..........
Typical Student Life at GBS
The day of a typical student started generally 10-15 minutes before the morning classes (i.e. around 8:50 am) and the students arrived at the class rooms on just-in-time basis. There were two scheduled lectures daily, each of 2 hours 30 minutes (+/- 10 or 15 minutes), offering a 30 minutes break in between the lectures............
Student Board Rooms (Group Assignments)
The Dean of the institute was on a visit to an educational conference where she got introduced to a concept of student board room or group assignments, wherein the class was divided into groups for a particular subject and the same group used to sit for discussing and completed the assignment every day...........
Current Value Chain of GBS
Currently the institute identified the “Students” as its Customer and Consumers and the whole system was designed keeping in mind student as the centre. A lot of weightage was given to academic education and the same was placed as an important parameter even for students to participate in college committees and events..........
The Survey
The Professors thought that since the students are the consumers of the institute (as per the present structure and process), it would always be wise to understand from these stakeholders of the issues faced by them in the present system of education. They wanted to unearth the reasons for the underperformance in group assignments and welcome suggestions from them on the areas of improvements..........
The Problem
The survey results led the professors to think on the actual role of the corporate in a management education course and how much were they valued for the placements. Can there be a possibility that they are the end consumers of the management education industry, for they are the ones that absorb the management graduates and logically it’s the placement that matters the most to the students (as per the survey).............
Exhibits
Exhibit I: GBS Value Chain
