Question one: You want a product or software. Whom will you ask it to be designed and produced?
Answer: Engineers

Question two: You want to know whether it is the right product for the market. What price will it sell? What is the competition? How to cost it and arrange funds? How to get the right people to run your functions? Once sold, are the customers satisfied? What are the service needs? What strategies and processes to adopt for optimum profitability and growth? Who will answer these questions for you?

Answer: Managers

Question Three: What is common in the competencies required for the two?
Answer: Nothing!

The body of knowledge and skills required are entirely different. Engineers make things while managers run the ship. Both are important and complimentary cogs in the organisational wheel.

Why then is management education in India regulated by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), a body which primarily concerns itself with Technical and Engineering education? The description of their mandate is clearly stated on their website: “The statutory body, established for proper planning and co-ordinated development of technical education system throughout the country.”

The paradigm of AICTE towards only technical education is further exemplified by their assertion on the primacy of technical education. “The economic progress of a country is strongly linked with the quality of education. It is therefore, necessary for our technical education to undertake periodic review of the curriculum and subject content of the technical programmes to ensure that they are up to date not outmoded or obsolete and effectively fulfill the technological requirements of the country.” Note that there is no mention of management, unless they take management as technical!

There is enough evidence that AICTE regulates management education exactly the same way as technical education. This is despite the fact that technical education should impart the know-how while management education should teach the know why, when, which, by whom, how many etc. Technology is deterministic while management is situational. The later cannot be learnt the same way as the former.

Let us take some examples.

Bracketing Management as Technical: AICTE gives their area of operation thus: “The purview of AICTE (the Council) covers programmes of technical education including training and research in Engineering, Technology, Architecture, Town Planning, Management, Pharmacy, Applied Arts and Crafts, Hotel Management and Catering Technology etc at different levels.” It is obvious that for AICTE, management education is similar to technical education. This means syllabus structure, pedagogy, faculty recruitment and compensation, infrastructure norms etc would be similar if not the same. In the list, Management and Hotel Management are the odd ones out. AICTE has failed to understand that Management is a professional programme and not a technical course like engineering. The former deals with practice while the later is thrives on applied information.

Affiliation phobia: AICTE insists on affiliating a management course to a University. With no university dedicated to management education, normal universities have to be patronised. For all these universities, management is yet another subject like science, arts or even engineering. All such subjects concentrate on providing information which can be applied in working life uniformly in all similar situations. In the case of management of businesses, no two situations are alike and the same solution cannot be applied, despite the situations seeming to be similar. Hence, management education needs a different paradigm than other courses. No university has made any effort to understand this difference and consequently make systems for teaching management the same way as other subjects. The top B-Schools, who are mostly autonomous, understand the difference and hence try to provide the desired value. The insistence on university affiliation by AICTE almost guarantees mediocrity and trivialisation of management education in 90% of the management programmes.

Faculty  norms :  Though debatable, a PhD degree is considered the sign of knowledge. All through academia, faculty with PhDs are insisted upon. Similarly AICTE also states the preference for PhDs for teaching engineering subjects. The same has been blindly translated as the preference for management faculty, though with some modifications. While the norm may have some merit in technical and other subjects of scholarship, by no stretch of the imagination can one say that a PhD knows the ways of managing businesses better! How many even attempt to take a PhD in Management? (Except those who start and remain academicians and take a PhD only because it is needed for their careers).

Career academicians can hardly talk about management without practical experience of handling business situations. Further, there are subjects like statistics, law, economics etc which are taught in MBA. Does it mean that a PhD in law is needed? It is quite clear that norms for management faculty need to be based more on practical experience rather than mere qualifications, due to the sheer nature of the subject. The pre-occupation of AICTE with teaching rather than industry experience is evident when their norm for professor states “….10 years experience in Teaching/ Industry/ Research out of which 5 years must be at the level of Assistant Professor.” Where and how does one find the level of  Asst. Professor in the industry ?

Faculty compensation:  Only a committed faculty can impart value education. Commitment can come through passion and satisfaction. Passion is what would bring experienced managers into academics, while compensation and environment would lead to satisfaction. It follows that attraction and retention should be the goals while forming infrastructural and compensation norms. Even a cursory glance at the AICTE norms shows hardly any difference between norms for technology and management. Once again it is clear that management is not thought to be any different from technology.

While technology faculty can be primarily career academicians, management faculty must be industry experienced who would expect at least to maintain their standard of living when switching over to academics. But the AICTE norms, both for infrastructure and salaries, do not seem to appreciate this. This is despite the fact that the fee levels for management courses are much higher and the investments required are a fraction of the technical education – leading to the highest ROI in the academic business!! The situation leads to substandard faculty giving substandard inputs to students in a non conducive environment. Incidentally, technical education is probably the only sector in India  where private sector salaries are directed by government! The advertisements calling for faculty proudly claim “as per AICTE norms” with an erroneous assumption that the right kind of faculty would be attracted. (Incidentally, AICTE has not revised the salary norms  for the past 10 years – the highest growth time of Indian economy)

Success Rate: Of the top 100 management courses in India, most started as autonomous courses without the aid of AICTE regulatory norms. They had to subsequently obtain the approval more out of compulsion. The other more than 1,100 courses, despite being set up under strict regulations by AICTE, languish as yet another course without any active patronage by the industry, despite the lofty ideals proudly proclaimed by the AICTE. The salary levels commanded by their graduating students are no more than normal non technical graduates. This is not the case with technical education, where industry support is more active. The AICTE regulations, hence, are conducive only for technical education, though they too need a lot of improvement.

So, what is needed ?
India is poised to be a major economic power. The country would need a large pool of good quality technologists to produce world class products. Simultaneously, we would need high caliber managers to ensure the products are successful worldwide. This obviates the urgent need for nurturing (not regulating) management education in an appropriate and effective way.

Is it not time, then, to constitute an All India Council for Management Education (AICME) with a different but appropriate mandate and structure than AICTE?

It is heartening to see that the National Knowledge Commission has taken cognisance of the issue. While identifying their focus areas, they have rightly separated Engineering education and Management education. Even their “issues under consideration” are quite different for the two streams of learning.

However, due to the “advisory” (not executive) status of NKC, one can only hope that good sense will prevail on the Government and the recommendations are implemented without the normal bureaucratic delays.

The issues raised here are not the result of just an intellectual exercise. The author himself is both an Engineer and an MBA and has been in the industry for more than 25 years.