By: Surinder Batra, Dean Academics and Professor at IMT Ghaziabad
The world of business in India is being increasingly characterized by technology-led competition, emergence of techno-entrepreneurs and rapid offering of new products and services in almost all sectors of economy.
These changes in the larger business environment of the country will also get reflected in the management education sector.
1. To cater to the knowledge and skill needs for these trends, the management education sector will seek greater and vibrant linkages with the industry.
2. The general full time MBA will still continue but will face more challenges of relevance from the industry. Programs in the executive education space with industry sponsorship are likely to become more prominent. Programs or courses modelled on company-specific offerings linked with preferred placement opportunities for students enrolling for such programs or courses will find increasing favour from business schools. Demand for shorter and domain specific courses within established programmes will escalate in domains such as .
3. As many would-be pass-outs from business schools are getting inclined to have their own start-up business, the demand for courses which help budding entrepreneurs to get established will grow.
4. There will be a perceptible shift in pedagogy towards case-based teaching, a trend which has been already visible in the recent years. There will be a greater focus on India-centric cases as the students are able to more closely relate themselves to Indian situations.
5. Much has been written about MOOCS (Massively Open On-line Courses) model of education in the previous years, but this trend has not caused significant disruption in the traditional model of delivering business education. However, delivery of executive learning programmes through technology based platforms will find increasing acceptability and growth.
6. The clamour among business schools for higher rankings in the rankings published by reputed ranking agencies will intensify due to its direct impact on the inclination of prospective students to opt for better ranked institutes. Business schools will increasingly invest in getting themselves accredited through reputed accreditation agencies. They will also substantially invest in aggressive social media campaigns to reinforce their brand identity to attract students.
7. The year 2016 will also see further consolidation in the business school sector in response to the regulatory pressures.
