Vohra of NMIMS claims her business school’s curriculum is vastly different from what it was even three years ago. “We keep revisiting our curriculum to wean out what is outdated and bring the latest from research as well as from practice. Whether it is net zero or climate solutions or sustainability challenges, or how governance changes to deal with disruptions, the topics are embedded and integrated into our core curriculum as well as electives. Similarly, predictive analysis to be able to prepare for future scenarios or data-driven insights, all these reflect in our curriculum.”

But then, “the development of managerial talent in India can’t be the responsibility of institutions only,” Vohra points out. “The industry has to collaborate with us. If you look at worldwide trends in industry and university partnerships, those are the spaces from where innovations have happened for society and nations. India needs those partnerships. Let’s look at the problems holistically and partner to solve it.”

The challenge for schools slightly lower in the pecking order of ranking is not just to make their curricula industry-ready, but also improve their brand visibility so that they are able to attract good-quality students. “If you don’t have good-quality students, the faculty can’t do magic,” says Himadri Das, director general, International Management Institute (IMI), which has campuses in Delhi, Kolkata, and Bhubaneswar. A key part of the institute’s visibility exercise has been its podcast series, where the faculty talks about the research it is doing and the transformational practices it has brought about into the classrooms.

“We also get a lot of industry people on our campus to interact with students, and we do bite-sized content out of that,” explains Das, who claims these initiatives have actually helped in increasing the average CTC offered to students on each of their campuses.

“Younger IIMs neither have faculty nor industry participation. Therefore, people are beginning to question the relevance of MBA students,” says Narayanan.

Industry-academia collaboration

Is the business school faculty distanced from industry realities? Industry believes so. While most schools take pride in the pool of industry practitioners who come to their campuses to teach, a large section believes B-schools’ involvement with industry needs to be more meaningful.

Business school faculty needs to engage in consulting assignments with industry, says Nitu Bhushan, CHRO, Pernod Ricard, South Asia. “They should actually come to work with a company on a new brand or a new launch, and understand how pricing actually works, so that when they go back, what they talk is engaging. They are not intellectually debating a model, they are bringing diverse opinions on the table.”

Narayanan, however, feels not only should the faculty be more involved with industry, the latter should also be incentivised to join the academia. He refers to the ‘professor of practice’ initiative of the government, which has not been particularly impactful because the compensations are not commensurate to what industry offers. “In the U.S., there are incentives given to people joining academia from industry. It should be the case in India too. I am not saying that economic motive will only drive industry to campuses, but there needs to be professional stimulus along with the core motive of giving back. Recognition is also important.”

Business school deans argue their faculty is continuously encouraged and incentivised to interact with industry and participate in industry forums and conferences across the world. Most of them take pride in the industry-relevant research they participate in, again a point industry veterans choose to disagree with. The belief is that B-schools are overdoing research, since the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) allocates 24% of its score to this metric. They also have to show 100% placements, for which it is allocated another 16%. Rankings drive admissions, and admissions drive revenue — a cycle that has pushed some lower-tier institutes into murky territory, including fabricated data and even purchasing research from the black market.

Schools such as KJ Somaiya, IMI Delhi and IMT Ghaziabad are using the Coursera catalogue to train their faculty in AI and data, so that they in turn can train their students. “Schools are trying to upskill their faculty, but many are struggling as well. It will take time,” says Ashutosh Gupta, MD, Coursera India.

Research needs to be integrated into real world problem statements, feels Tarunesh Madan, co-managing partner of Amrop India, a leadership and board advisory firm. He cites the example of how Amrop India placed a professor of a leading global university as the CTO of a capital equipment company. “The company was clear that this capability will reside in the global academic circuit, and we got somebody of Indian origin, a senior professor leading a centre of excellence in one of the renowned U.S. institutes. This kind of transition, where an accedemician takes up a corporate role, is not often seen in India. In fact, Indian academic institutions are still a distance away from real world problem solving when it comes to fundamental research.”

The past five years has seen the emergence of a bunch of new-age B-schools such as Masters’ Union, Mesa School of Business, and Scaler School of Business. These are startups that have chosen not to traverse the research path, but instead double up live industry immersions. They have tasted success, at least initially, with their students getting paycheques, almost equivalent to some of the leading IIMs. Almost 80% of their faculty is from the startup world. Will the model work in the long-run? That’s debatable.

Conventional business schools are undergoing an identity crisis. Is B-school education losing its relevance? Not really. What’s needed today is a reimagination of their purpose, along with stronger and deeper collaboration between industry and academia to ensure graduates are truly future-ready and equipped for rapidly evolving business challenges.

Coursera catalogue

India’s Best B-schools: Time for reschooling? Identity crisis hits management institutes