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The only worry it seems, for the MBA students nowadays, is placements. While this is even true for the top 20 Institutes of the country, where the season is mostly of fun and joy but still students are bothered about the quality and magnitude of the offers, it is more stark reality for the rest where the question is “will I or won’t I” get a placement at all ?B-schools are getting lower-quality and more-unscrupulous-business day by day. At the time of Admissions, they show 100% placements and once the eager (read “stupid”) unsuspecting students anxious to be accepted for admission in “M B A !!!” put their heads in the Guillotine, the institutes start playing games to put all kind of conditions to the students for placement eligibility – e.g. At least 75% attendance, at least 60% marks all over their career, active participation in the placement initiatives etc. Even the choice of the specialization (a well known Institute in Kolkata is pushing it’s students to take only Marketing) – you just fail one of these and bang goes the responsibility of the Institute for 30/40% of the students. The question of why the Institute at all accepted the student with less than 60% of marks in all exams, is not relevant – it’s their ground, you have paid the fees and are an orphan now.
The students who finally get any placement interview, go through rounds of selection and quite often a small percentage get the cut. The students are often of intrinsic low quality, with “you have money to pay, come to our MBA” kind of admissions nowadays. While many of them have the intelligence and good potential, the problem is in the attitude and training as they are averse to any idea of self-improvement. World is still rosy and they came to MBA to have fun!! Then, in most of the institute, they are not even suitably trained to take on the serious business of interviews – no proper soft skill training, forget about the life skills. “They cost money and once our revenue is assured, we will cut off all expenses” – say the Institutes. For show, sometimes they keep a soft skill trainer, who definitely needs to be trained first – because those people come cheap and good quality people demand good money. Faculties for the other subjects are nearly the same. Private institutes mostly take the low quality-lowest pay kind of people who will make the numbers for the AICTE regulation (beside showing everybody from the Librarian, Placement executives, Systems admin, accounts people, admin people etc. as faculties to make the mandatory minimum 1:15 ratio) and keeping a few dummy (long retired super-senior citizen- many of them are so old that they don’t and can’t come to teach even) professors of fancy Universities to show as the crocodile babies to the world that these people teach here – AICTE and the University officials will look the other way, many of them are rumored to be on under-the-table payrolls.
The hype that had been created by the media and been kept alive by the Institutes was primarily responsible for the ruckus. Even 15 year ago, there were only a few Institutes and only the very serious students used to aspire for the MBA. Nowadays, seats are much more than the demand and the Institutes are taking anybody who has the money to pay or are so mad that they are ready to sell off whatever they have to pay for the MBA education of their children. The hype is always about the 1-crore plus salaries of the IIM pass-outs. But nobody cares to see that the 1 cr+ is only for the top 1% students and the other real fancy salaries are only reserved for the IIMs and that too their top 5-10%. I know of many people coming out of the IIMs who commands salaries which, by no imagination of the mind, are fancy and are easy targets of these land mafia Institute owners who take them to boast to their students to turn the Institutes into “IIMs”. The biggest spends of the Institutes nowadays are on their admission adverts and a fraction of that are being spent on the faculties. Research ?? what is that ? Consulting !! God save me. The abysmal standards of the faculties ensure any serious faculty being hounded by some of his insecure or devilish colleagues, because he becomes threat to them – once the students get the taste of Biriyani they will be less inclined to accept the stale rice. And the Institute is also prompt to push him out because anybody worth his salt has his confidence and will ask for a good and proper compensation, and not the piece of shit thrown to him by the owner. Who requires quality ? Students will not pay any more!!
Students themselves are also not bothered to learn, they have paid money, so they must be given jobs – simple. And mind it, the job must be of specific type, high pay, low work pressure (they need to be in facebook half the time), no going out in the Sun, no sales, no targets, high prospects and yes, I like the corner cabin, Thank you. Only the aspirations never match the capability or attitude. But please do not try to teach us a lot, do not give us “gyans”, we hate it. We are there, so smart and handsome people, aren’t that enough for these jobs ? Are you blind ?
Companies do not care, they know the levels and play ball. They take the better people among these (in any class, even in IIMs, 5-10% are excellent, 30% are very good, 40% so-so and the rest are unspeakable) at very good rates and down the line they have the option of throwing out the worse ones. In fact, many business schools give money to the companies to take some of their students (the salary or most part of it are paid by the Institute - who cares to pay Rs. 50K when you are charging Rs.5.5 Lacs each student) and telling them that after 6 months you choose which ones you want to keep. This is a win-win situation for the Institute and the Company, so all smiles, click click. The banks do not need money also, they need volumes of people to sell their myriad financial schemes and credit cards, don’t bother about quality because they pay the plain graduates or undergraduates the same rates (and often the commission basis is more than the salary), and the result – in 2-6 months, 80-90% of the people recruited get mad enough to resign and cool their heels in their homes – unemployed or get head on in search of another job. Then they head for another Institute to get their 3-6 monthly meals. The attrition rates for these banks and Insurance companies tell the story.
Students also know these stories, the reputation travels fast, but because of the “day order” policy, they often have to sit for these interviews and once selected, their names are struck off the list, pushing them to the brink. Many of them have low Morales and confidence and try to avoid the possibility of looking for jobs on their own, unless their parents have nice connections. While the obvious downside is there, they often do not understand the long-term advantage of trying. Life is not a one-time affair. Even if you get the job from the campus the first time, all the next ones you have to fight it out in the marketplace. So, it is always better to practice the preparation from the beginning.
But nevertheless, the Institute put those big names in their ads, to say that we have given placements in those. We have no objections, because in any case, most of the names put are bogus and are lies. Even if a Company ever sent a regret letter to the proposal of a Campus interview, that name is included. Institutes usually use the company names who ever came to their campus for the students of any stream, and use that list for all streams, good or bad. Beside, the Institute advertises the 100% placement achieved in it’s Engineering side in the ad for the MBA admissions (In MBA, the figure was less than 40% last year). Fraud ? – that is the name of the game everywhere.
Under these scenarios, many students start searching for the jobs much before the placement starts and many of them succeeds too, again they mostly belong to the upper two categories and they often do not depend on the Institutes and take their required trainings outside. They know they cannot learn everything by themselves. Some more confident ones, even reject the unsuitable offers and go into the market by themselves. Even the research needs some training and perseverance and attitude, and many of them lack one or all of these.
Another issue is the post-joining survival. Nowadays most students are fresh as flowers and simply do not have the idea of the corporate jungle. After joining, they get sucked into the huge vortex of the internal politics and many of them succumb to it without an option and their life’s happiness is gone. It’s a slightly better scenario in very big or MNC organisations (but they take people from the top-level Institutes or take some students for the lower positions from others) but there the people slowly develop a confidence in themselves also that enable them to take on the jungle rules slowly. Some students get indirect training from their family slowly and get more matured than the others to deal with the outside world, the major portion do not.
Pray that the placements come and give the corner rooms.
