Ph.D. = Phoolish Doctor?

It's still a 'may' headline but am positive. A lot of places don't consider me suitable in a 'teacher' role simply coz of the Ph.D. requirement.

In the same breath, when I talk with Ph.D.s I am astonished at the (lack of) quality with which a good number of these places make do.

And I can only imagine what's the state of affairs at not-so-known B-schools, and they simply take 2 mighty years away. The folks are reeling under shortages of faculty, and of the grey matter in the heads of their faculty, and then release an ad saying they want 'Ph.D.'. Meanwhile students, when they go out looking for well-paying jobs, brandish an MBA on their CVs, with obnoxious grammar and spelling mistakes haloing that MBA.

-18

That's the score at which, I was informed at an institute I recently visited, a student was (or had to be) admitted to the MBA program.

1. MBA is no longer a serious program.
2. Supply of MBA institutes far exceed the demand.
3. Students are getting dumber.
4. Institute is under pressure for monetary reasons to admit such students.
5. MBA, the tag, has become more important than actual merit.
6. MBA has become a short-cut to everything.

I still haven't gotten down to listing the more serious inferences. Make your inferences.

Return on Formal Education (RFE)

Sharing some stats from this article I read two days back:

• India now produces more engineers and MBAs than the US and China combined. Our annual output of 15 lakh engineers and 3 lakh MBAs is way ahead of the US (1 lakh engineers and 1.25 lakh MBAs) and China (11 lakh engineers and 75,000 MBAs).
• MBAuniverse.com estimates that outside the top 20 MBA colleges only 24% of students are employable.
• Assocham believes that campus placement (in the context of engineering) outside the top 20 colleges is 10%.

The article also has some suggestions which is where it gets really funny. By funny, I mean the quality of suggestions, not really the stats. Stats aren't surprising at all. Have a look:

• They must get 3-5 years of work experience after their engineering or college degree before getting an MBA.
• If most students are not getting campus placements we need to fix our dysfunctional employment exchanges that only gave 3 lakh jobs last year to the 4 crore kids registered. We need to allow foreign universities in.
• We need to raise our 3 lakh formal apprenticeships — Germany has 40 lakh, Japan 1 crore and China has 1.5 crore.
• Most importantly, India must explode job creation because nothing changes a student's life more than their first formal, non-farm job. 

A critique of the article:
While every action or piece of execution benefits from good measurement systems and the stats emerging out of these measurement systems, the recommendations offered in this article reek of naivete at best. Even offering only the stats would've done better justice to the gravity of the situation.

Find the article here. 

47% graduates in India unemployable for any job

From Hindustan Times, Mumbai Edition, 25th June 2013

This little piece appeared in a little column which could easily have been missed (and in fact, would have been missed by plenty of readers, if not majority).

Generations must have passed through years and years of education without leaving a trace of any worthwhile work. Incredible! How does a country change? How does a country choose the right people to rule itself? How does a country make sense of anything important at the macro level? How does a country take constructive collective action at all?

2 ways come to mind promptly: 1) finding some space for such news on the main page so long as people still habitually read newspapers in the morning, and 2) allotting greater space to such news, at least greater than the coaching class ads that boast of top-rankers in this exam or that exam.

Formula for learning

Do - record - reflect - eat - read - sleep - plan - do - record - reflect - eat - read - sleep - plan - do - record - reflect - eat - read - sleep...

The education system was meant to ensure just that. Instead, sit - sit - sit - sit - sit...

Goddess of English

I just came across this interesting bit. And only now.

A Dalit writer called Chandra Bhan Prasad, along with the dalit community of a village called Banka in UP, has built a temple to worship the Goddess of English!

An excerpt from a write-up on the BBC site:

About two feet tall, the bronze statue of the goddess is modelled after the Statue of Liberty.

"She is the symbol of Dalit renaissance," says Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer who came up with the idea of the Goddess of English

"She holds a pen in her right hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a huge hat - it's a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old traditional dress code.

"In her left hand, she holds a book which is the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the ladder and become free for ever."

Incredible!

It's a sort of socio-cultural development but I gather quite a few marketing tips from this event.

If people are stuck up about religion, seed the change in the religion itself, instead of trying to generate an anti-religious sentiment. Am sure it must have been some work convincing at least some of the dogmatic people in the community.

And if God is the greatest and if God's word is the highest command, then make God command the change.

They've also announced that they'll celebrate Oct 25 every year as English Day. Of course, if you have Ram Navmi, Shivratri, Holi and so on, why not English Day for Goddess of English.

Still early days but this should yield interesting and positive results. Great initiative.

You can go through the BBC article here.

Pic courtesy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

An idea for aspiring MBA-lured entrepreneurs

Having 'studied' entrepreneurship, one thing is clear to me. You needn't study entrepreneurship if you really have to become an entrepreneur.

Also having been a management student and now training management grads, I realize how much money and time goes into pursuing an MBA. 10-12 or may be 14-15 odd lacs in a couple of years. Daily expenses excluded.

Here's an idea:

Enterprise MBA, let me call it. Instead of putting in a million bucks for sitting through the classrooms and listening to all the gyan all the time, I propose to invest part of the fee in setting up an actual venture. Rest goes into classroom training which would be limited to a couple of hours in the day on an average. For the duration of the MBA, you are guided in running this venture and make it work. When you graduate, you have something of your own. Already!

Imagine if 4 such students pool in their fee into a venture!

I propose this also after I have spent all the money in studying and this and that, and after I've found it extremely hard (and still find it hard) based on these credentials that my education accorded me, to raise the seed capital. Why waste all of this precious resource called capital into simply sitting (and very often sleeping through) the classes!

Placement woes

Found this on the front page of AM yesterday. Doesn't come as a surprise. And won't be surprised if the stats in other states are similar.

The numbers are such that I suppose India has to produce jobs for 1 Australia every year. That is insane! Couple the enormity of the number with the quality of governance and structure of education system in this country, I wonder what are we staring at in the times to come.

Anyway, all's not bad. I've plan for some young grads willing to take initiative and be on their own. Will try to connect with some of them and find out.

Balanced Schooling

Ana: Clado, that pile of books!
Clado: It's a tall one. Big thick books.
Ana: Can you balance with all those on your head?
Clado: My head!?!?
Ana: They are talking about balancing no!
Clado isn't amused! Ana goes on...
Ana: And balancing books on your head would be a lot of fun with basketball in your hands and footballs at your feet! Eyes glued to the microscope!
Clado: Stop it. You don't handle all together.
Ana: You are made to. One after another after another, sure. No kidding. That's balancing. Best of everything, indeed.

Stress-marks

Was talking to a school-friend, who runs tuition classes in the same complex where Mississippi Earrings is located, last night. Two old mates finding common ground in 'training' will not refrain from talking about the strange things.

Few years back, schools started becoming the target of parent-groups. Why? Students were finding themselves under immense pressure in the competitive world of academic excellence, signified by 'marks'. And schools were somehow seen to be the culprit. So schools changed the ways they trained students.

That change meant schools almost became a stroll in the park. Leisurely. And 'marks' became a casualty.

How could have parents tolerated a drop in academic excellence! No way! Having accused and believed that schools were stressful, parents rushed to tuition classes in search of 'marks'. Tuitions classes run by school-teachers who knew no better than the old methods of the very same schools which had changed their methods and where they were employed for years. Applying the old methods more rigorously, these tuition classes rewarded the parents and students with academic excellence. Marks!

My friend says the kids have no time. While schools give limited homework, tuition classes load the kids. The latter are asked to write the same things/exercises over and over again. Of course they get marks in return. Parents are okay with the stress as long as the kids are minting marks.

Campus Placements / Laziness

I've been listening to the stories of some about-to-graduate b-school students.

I sense when students pay the hefty fee for studying at these b-schools they buy not the 'education', they buy campus placements.

At another level, it seems money induces laziness. Just coz students have paid the fee doesn't mean that they don't have to put in the effort to bag the job they like and they deserve.

Also, who says that fresh management grads are meant only for the companies that visit the campus for recruitment. Why can't students voluntarily and individually approach the companies which they feel like working for.

Reader of Philosophy

Reading about the word 'Doctor' on Wikipedia, I come across this: (highlighted in red, mine)

The Ph.D. was originally a degree granted by a university to learned individuals who had achieved the approval of their peers and who had demonstrated a long and productive career in the field of philosophy. The appellation of "Doctor" (from Latin: teacher) was usually awarded only when the individual was in middle age. It indicated a life dedicated to learning, to knowledge, and to the spread of knowledge.

Notice the words in red. As many things borrowed by India from the west, 'Ph.D.' is also a borrowed concept. From sheer observation, one thing can easily be inferred: the Doctors of Philosophy (the majority of them) out here haven't necessarily had a life dedicated to learning, to knowledge, and to the spread of knowledge. Quality of universities conferring Ph.D.s is largely suspect. The one function they really do well is 'confer the Doctorate' and thereby ensure that the 'Doctor' bags a job.

Also, the absolute number of peers has definitely increased. A learned person's view is subject to scrutiny among a greater number of peers than it was some decades back. In the Indian context, couple this with a lack of quality and there is good potential for academic hoaxes all around.

Ph.D. was once symbolic of great rigor. Rigor was always bigger than the symbol that stood for it. But like many other symbols, this symbol seems to have taken an existence of its own and seems to have given job-seekers a short-cut to bypass the rigor. 

My solution: have 'extent of reading' as a dominant measure of 'a life dedicated to learning, to knowledge, and to the spread of knowledge'. For quality of teaching is, to a great extent, a function how well-read the teacher is. Ph.R. seems more appealing. Would I want to converse with and learn from a person who's gone through like 1000 books? Definitely. Am I likely to 'enjoy' learning in company of such a person? You bet.

Management Education through Reading

I dream of an institute where management training and education is driven by reading. Yes, the primary mode of instruction is reading. Indirectly, self-understanding, and of course, aided by the presence of experts around.

Instead of classrooms there could be reading rooms. Instead of classrooms there could be ideas-of-the-book discussion rooms. There could be two libraries - one driven by theoretical texts and the other by pop-texts.

Now what should I do?