GyanCentral

What was the objective for the Mumbai University to introduce the BMS course?

The objective was to move students from grant courses to non grant courses. If a student does B.Com, BSc or BA the government spends about INR 15000 per student for subsidizing the education but the fees charged are only 3000 and remaining amount is subsidized. Considering the number of students and colleges in the state it amounts to hundreds of crores of rupees. In order reduce this grant amount the government asked institutions to start unaided courses and thus BMS was introduced as the first unaided course. Later courses like BBA and BBI in various state universities were introudced. This lead to a shift in the courses pursued by the students and the grant amount reduced considerably.

Do you think the BMS course is valued above a BCom course or the value remains the same?

As of today, according to me the BMS course has lost its value. The course has become very stagnant and the pattern of exams is more or less similar leading to a spurt in coaching classes. It's turning to be like a BCom course with some changes and higher fees. The reason for students to join the BMS course is the management education provided at undergraduate level and helping them get placed. But, the placements don't seem to be happening barring a few exceptions, making it necessary for them to pursue further education like MMS or MBA which is what normally a BCom student would do. In fact, I would say it is better to do a BCom or BSc from good a college rather than doing a BMS from a lower rung institute. For example If a student does BSc from St.Xaviers College, by virtue of being in Xaviers the student has access to the placement programme and hence likely to be placed in a good company.

Are there any other factors that would have lead to devalue the course in terms of the curriculum and its structure?

The course curriculum is defined once in 5 years and is heavily drawn from the MMS or MBA programme. The course curriculum is fine but it largely depends upon the institute, the faculty and how the course is delivered.

Has the scraping of BMS exam played a crucial role in course loosing it's essence?

The BMS entrance exam had a charm associated with it. The entire process of giving the entrance and then counseling rounds was more of a marketing moment I would say. Initially the university would conduct the entire process of admissions right from the entrance exam to allocation of colleges. But there was a constant pressure from the colleges, to allow them to do their admission process independently as there was a possibility that colleges may not be filling up seats. Therefore in 2002, the entrance exam was there but the admissions were done by the colleges and eventually in 2007 the entrance exam was finally scrapped. Thus, the BMS course lost the entrance exam charm and the university suffered in terms of revenue as the entrance exam fee was no longer earned by them. Also as the process was no longer centralized the students have to run from one college to another for their admissions and lastly after doing all this, the course doesn't seem to be delivering, so students and parents think twice before stepping into the course.

Even management colleges are introducing integrated BBA-MBA programme like IIM Indore. Do you think this is the future for pursuing management education?

I think this will lead to an increase in competition which is good as it will raise education standards. These colleges will have higher fees as they will not subsidize the course heavily like Mumbai university and will provide a better experience to students

In terms of course content for the BMS course, what do you think are the areas of improvement?

As far as the course content is concerned, I think it does not require any further changes. But it is the faculty that needs to improve. There has to be an improvement in faculty, we need more people to come into teaching either full time or part time, proper resources should be made available to them, teacher training programmes should be conducted for faculty development and all the material required needs to be provided. Sometimes, it is also the case that a faculty would see teaching as an opportunity to earn an extra income and thus they land up taking extra lectures in a day or teach in many colleges at the same time which is beyond their capacity. There are certain international norms pertaining to the amount of hours a teacher should teach, how much work load they should take etc. such norms should be devised and followed to improve the quality of education.

It is also very important to rope in visiting faculty from various fields having years of expertise to come and share their experiences and teach students from a practical approach. The college should make arrangements to adjust timings of lectures according to their convenience usually in the evenings or on weekends. Such flexibility would help attract more faculty and experts in respective fields imparting quality education to students.

Another area for improvement is the remuneration. Standardization should be maintained in terms of remuneration paid to the visiting faculty. There needs to be an increase in the hourly remuneration paid to the faculty as well as in the salaries paid to teachers considering the rising costs and inflation.

How would you compare under graduate education in India and abroad?

In terms of comparing, the first thing I would look at is the money. For education in India one merely spends some approximately INR 50,000 over a period of three years for an undergraduate course whereas overseas one would end up spending around 10,000 $ (5,00,000) per year which is way to huge. Considering the amount that you are investing in education it is natural to get great infrastructure, college building, premises and other facilities. Overall education is almost the same though the batch size is much smaller abroad compared to that in India. There are certain pedagogy styles in the western world that are slightly different from that in India, but I would not say education in India is inferior to education abroad.