Business Today – August 25, 2019

August 25 I 2019 I BUSINESS TODAY I 93

ow has management education changed over the

years in the context of Asia, especially India?

A. The demand for management education is amazingly

stable. Even though there is a lot of churn happening with

different kinds of formats, the same number of people are

applying to business schools as before. But under that calm surface, there

is a fair amount of churn in a couple of dimensions.

One, we are seeing globalisation of the candidate base. Three or four

decades ago, management education was largely a western phenomenon;

today, it is across the world. China and India together take as many tests as

the US. So, the demographic base is shifting to Asia, and there is growth of

candidates from Africa and Central Asia as well.

Globally recognised brands in business education used to be largely

western schools, mainly in the US, but today there are very high-quality

education institutes around the world, particularly in Europe and Asia,

especially in Singapore and Hong Kong. Indian schools, too, are fast com-

ing up in global recognition.

We are seeing a maturing of the industry as well. When industries ma-

ture – and we have seen this in many other industries – they tend to seg-

ment. When Henry Ford came up with the Model T, it was one car and it

came in one colour. Today, you don’t think of a ‘car’; you think of an SUV,

a compact SUV, a family sedan, a convertible... The same is happening to

management education. The classic two-year MBA continues to be the

f lagship programme, but different forms of MBA programmes are emerg-

ing – one-year, online and blended. There are also early career options for

students directly out of school or with a year or two of experience, because

Sangeet Chowfla, President

and CEO, Graduate Management

Admission Council, which conducts the

Graduate Management Admission

Test, speaks to Sonal Khetarpal of

Business Today about the demand for

specialised courses and rise of

non-US B-schools. Edited excerpts:

H

mostly MBA is for people with five-

seven years of experience.

Then there are programmes tar-

geted towards working profession-

als and mid-career professionals, and

those are being enhanced using the

online format.

There is a rise in specialised man-

agement programmes. Are we

moving away from general

management education?

General management will always be

required because somebody in an or-

ganisation needs to be able to stitch

the different disciplines together and

understand the interaction between a

marketing decision and a human re-

source decision, a production decision

and a supply chain decision.

Specialised programmes by defini-

tion are about expertise in a particular

discipline. Continuing with my anal-

ogy of cars, there are multipurpose

vehicles and specialised vehicles. They

meet different needs and they happily

co-exist. That there are various options

is a sign of maturity of the industry.

We find maybe one in five people

who has done a Masters, and actually

considers coming back and taking an

MBA because she realises that the two

are not interchangeable. These are two

very different products and serve dif-

ferent needs.

I also encourage students to think

ahead. Those who are getting into the

workforce now will be working for the

next 40-50 years. It’s important to

have some generalised skills and not

to be over-specialised. There is a risk in

over-specialisation. It’s important that

we prepare not for the hot job market

of today but for the ability to co-exist

with organisations over a period.

Where does India stand as a

management education hub for

international students?

It is evolving. It’s fair to say that outside

students did not see India as a destina-

tion. Indian business schools did not do

enough international outreach, nor did

EDUCATION SPECIAL > INTERVIEW

PHOTOGRAPH BY SHEKHAR GHOSH