--By Purna Man Shakya

 

This is the globalised world where “today's best is not good enough for tomorrow". “Survival of the fittest” is the basic norms of the corporate world. To cope up with the constant changes, corporate houses are expecting more focused, technically competent, visionary, and adaptive human resources with ethically proper attitude at the managerial level. Thus, corporate world has highest expectations with fresh graduates in the area of attitude, followed by skill, and finally knowledge. Industry hires people with the right attitude and put an effort to train them. Despite this fact, the concept that “one gets job after one finishes studies” prevails in the market, and this is being promoted by parents as well as by B-schools. In this context, B-schools are more responsible for graduate’s preparedness and corporate houses are responsible for improving graduate’s performance at the job.

 

Fresh Graduates

Today's graduates are Y generation people born after 1978, generally below 30 years age. They are also called Nexters or cyber generation. These people grew up during the high-tech revolution; a world with high-tech video games, ATMs and high-speed access. These people are so ambitious and fast that they expect things to happen at a push button and also expect rapid promotion in the job. They show less patience while facing hardships. They have comparatively less passion and less inquisitiveness for the work, which may pose challenge for their career growth. Thus, graduates should analyse their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses and look for the job, with attributes that match to their personalities. Otherwise they will keep on applying for the jobs disregarding their interest, which will finally leave them in the middle of no way. Additionally, some graduates opt for enrolling into a degree. As soon as they finish Bachelors studies, instead of learning skills required for the Bachelors level job they are found pursuing their Masters level education. This culture of obtaining just the academic degrees is producing graduates with no appropriate skills that the industry demands.

 

B-Schools and Universities

Almost all the B-school faculties have best teachers that disseminate management know-how and are highly accustomed to the formal lecture oriented instructional processes. Students sit in the lecture halls and transcribe the lecture notes delivered by the faculty. Emphasis is being laid to a detailed theoretical understanding of business discipline. In turn, examinations require students to repeat large blocks of theory. For the student, rote memorization has become the primary means to succeed in examinations. But, due to changed context these days education at the graduation level is going beyond lectures. It is not all about mugging concepts but is about questioning the relevance of those concepts in today’s era. This is the era where classroom teaching is not sufficient. Despite these facts B-schools are not caring much in transforming students towards industry’s expectations. Due to their rigid and inflexible structure they are just caring about their results that are based on ‘marks mechanism’. Also, University is turning blind to update syllabus at regular intervals, which is forcing students to learn out-dated technology, process and methods in their classes. This prevails despite the fact that Industry expects students with proficiency in the latest innovative technologies. Despite these lackings, B-schools are found posting advertisements that encourage students to aim high with just the academic education they disseminate. 

 

Industries 

Industries are the landing areas of the graduates where academic knowledge learned from the B-schools gets transformed into actual skills. This is the ultimate platform of the graduates where actual career gets fostered. Mode of industries is highly influenced by the decision makers. Thus, grooming of the graduates depends largely upon the attitude, nature, interest, vision, and capabilities of the corporate world’s decision makers. This can be illustrated from the fact that some organisations prefer to give clerical jobs to the graduate interns whereas some mentor and groom graduates for decision making level tasks. Organisations perceiving fresh graduates as cheap labourers seem dissolving graduates’ enthusiasms from the day they join organisation. The status of fresh graduates is further worsened in the organisations where line managers deny support to HR functions. Thus, job description and actual work vary to a large extent in such organisations. Despite these facts, corporate sector still has great expectation from graduates and seeks following soft skills in addition to the hard skills:     

 

• Graduates must be committed, dedicated, self-disciplined, self-motivated, innovative, show aptitude and willingness to learn.

• Graduates must possess strong analytic, comprehending, leadership, and communication skills with good attitude. They must be a good team player and collaborator. Corporate also expects multidisciplinary problem solving approaches from the graduates. 

• Graduates must come in with at least a basic knowledge of the organisation and processes within the organisation, and an understanding of products, solutions, and services –including those of competitors – as well as consumer behaviour.

• Graduates specialising in particular subject are expected to develop deeper into these areas.

• Graduates must show high adaption skills to the requirement of the industry. 

• Graduates must be friendly with new technologies.

  (www.nam.org.np)

 

A Mismatch between B-schools and Corporate 

Corporate puts emphasis both on the soft as well as hard skills. Most of the B-schools are good in providing hard skills such as technical knowledge but fail in developing soft skills such as communication, leadership qualities, suitability, analytical power, ethical component, dressing sense, appearance, professional commitment and positive attitude. The problem lies in traditional approach of the B-Schools. Most of the B-Schools are focusing on “marks based mechanism”. But, this is the last priority of corporate. B-Schools are producing graduates for corporate, without giving much focus on its changing needs. So, there is a mismatch between knowledge and skills required for business needs and the existing skills of the graduates.

 

Areas of Improvement – Business Schools

The B-schools should try to improve following factors.

 

Faculty

• The B-schools must have permanent or regular faculty in all the main areas. 

• Each of these faculty members must meet at least one of the three criteria - a) senior managerial experience with a leading organisation, b) ability to relate the same to management concepts, c) consultancy experience in the corporate world or research experience in management. If the faculties are simply graduates, post-graduates that don’t meet any of these criteria, they will be just teaching the theories from the books which are not really relevant for a managerial career. Management career is about practice of management, which can be taught only through experience, expertise and exposure together with the relevant concepts. Thus an environment should be created where faculties and students openly interact beyond classrooms teachings.

 

Facilities

• The infrastructure and facilities must include classrooms with multimedia and projection facilities, latest computers and peripherals and a good library with collection of books on all management subjects.

 

Courses and Programs

• The courses and programs must be in line with the requirements of the corporate world. These courses must incorporate regular inputs from industry and should not be based solely on some books authored by someone who never had any exposure to management career, consultancy or research. Curriculum that develops overall professional skills of the graduates should be always updated. For this, Universities must keep eye on the changes going on in the market and make efforts to incorporate them in the curriculum.  

 

Networking

• B-schools must have extensive networking with the corporate world, nationally and internationally.

• This networking, on the one hand, makes it possible for the regular interaction of their senior managerial personnel with students while, on the other hand, provides these organisations a platform to coordinate with B-school for developing required capabilities in the students. This also provides these organisations opportunity to consider students for placement after they complete the programme. Apart from that, this practice helps to revise and refine the courses according to the needs of industry, integrate concept and theory in real work situation.

• Just as medical schools have hospitals, which provide opportunity for its faculty and students to practice, B-schools also need to have dummy area where they can practice what they have learned. If this option sounds expensive a strong network with the industry is must.  

 

Guest Lecture by Industry Experts

• Mostly the syllabus is full of out-dated content units. The industry experts can introduce students with the latest technology, process and methods, which are used by the industry. Contemporary knowledge enhances the employability of the students. Guest lecturers and experts from industries should also be invited for guiding students while selecting major subjects. 

 

Career counselling bench for the students

• B-schools should conduct thorough research of the industries and provide right career counselling to the students so that they do not feel neglected by both B-schools and the industry during job placement. Additionally, B –Schools should have job placement coordinator to facilitate job placements for the students. 

 

Guidance to the teachers

• Teachers’ major responsibilities are seen as delivering lecture, assessing assignments, supporting project work and case studies, and conducting internal assessment. Teachers must be given proper guidelines or orientations of curricular activities and syllabus rather than allowing teachers prepare their own mental plan and deliver lectures. An environment should be created where teachers and students interact not only in the classrooms but also outside of it. A culture to have group discussion in B-schools should be promoted. 

 

Lobbying for work after the studies

• Only students with few years of relevant work experience should be admitted for the master’s education. 

 

Areas of Improvement for the Corporate

• Constraint in career growth opportunities contributes in the rise of employee turnover ratio. In this context, a popular saying goes “Employees leave their bosses but not their profession”.

• Employee dissatisfaction seems more in organisations where decision makers prefer to centre authority around them and their preferred ones. This is contributing in retaining only “yes men and women”, family members, near and dear ones in general, non-productive employees. So, professionalism should replace nepotism. Attitude such as “My family member or close aid owns a business and my job is secured whatever may be my competency level” should be discouraged. 

• A state of confusion about roles and responsibilities is prevalent in the industry where decision makers have least knowledge on the strategic planning and fair management practices. 

• Also, a feeling to take graduate intern as a cheap labourer should be replaced by a feeling to train and develop fresh graduates as a part of corporate social responsibility. 

• Organisations should have clear, fair, transparent and stable policies including career growth mechanisms for the graduates so that they get groomed from the day they join organisation either as an intern or as a regular staff.

• Industry should remember “more cannot be expected with the fresh graduates if industry itself is not clear about its own strategies”.

 

In conclusion, interface between Business schools and Industry is must and is the only win-win approach that strengthens all the stakeholders including students, B-schools and the Industry. The interface improves employability of the students, enhances quality of higher education and improves operation efficiency of corporate houses.

 

(Shakya is a Lecturer at Grammar Public College, a Management Consultant  with BS Nepal and Chairman of Sarathi Nepal, Lalitpur. The article is based on a discussion organised by Real Solutions recently.)