Revisiting MBA education in India

MBA education completes 100 years of its existence and keeps on attracting students from various streams of study all over the world. It is still treated as a pass port to a lavish life for the aspirants. MBA programs are being offered through full-time, part-time, executive, and distance learning modes. Apart from admission tests, consistent academic performance, significant work experience, essays, references or letters of recommendation and personal interviews are some of the set procedures one must go through to get admission for the graduate program. In order to achieve class-diversity, business schools also consider male-female and local-international student ratios. Recently, well-known publications have started ranking selected MBA programs. But, often a school’s rank varies significantly across publications as the methodologies used for the ranking are found different among publications. Accrediting agencies have also come to existence, especially for MBA programs, to ensure consistency and quality. But, the glamour of business education has been eroding instead of going northwards in the market economic scenario. What exactly ails MBA education? How to get out of the shambles? This paper tries to analyze the evolution, development and reasons for the declining value of business education, and aims to come out with practical solutions for its revival