B-schools with very high proportion of Industry Managers as Faculty: Is it a positive trend?

These faculty of practice are largely without Ph.D. Certainly they have not undergone the academic rigor of a good Ph.D. They may not fit in today when the management subjects have developed as a science. N. Ravichandran,IIM Ahmedabad faculty and former Director of IIM Indore said in one of his speeches, “Over a period of time our management educational system has degenerated into information sharing. Often the teacher is merely two hours ahead of the taught on the subject matter. Of course, large number of skills, concepts, frameworks are passed on routinely in the classroom without any meaningful insight.”

Pedagogy
On pedagogical front it deteriorated in terms of secondary-source Case Method, with little authentic data and any connect with the firm. Since the learners were changing due to various factors, keeping them engaged became a challenge. Innovations were done in pedagogy primarily based on theoretical frameworks and exposure got limited to imagined situations. Faculty started looking for computerized or guided solution by someone without experiencing any of such situation himself. At times some of these methods became just “gaming” for the learner.

It was realised that learner can significantly contribute to learning in MBA program. B-schools started focusing on the diversity. At the same time, learner was coming with a different mind-set and professional experience. The change in the format of prior education at school and degree level has posed new challenges. More so B-schools were being taken by employers as well as by learners as employment exchanges. The faculty is found to be falling short to cope up with these challenges and deliver the professional MBA education.

Ph.D. or Fellowship Program
In the boom ensuing Liberalization, in late 1990s and till early 2000s, B-schools suffered from Faculty shortage. Government came out to impress institution to churn out more Ph.D. and Fellows and offered extra grants for it. Liberal sanctions came to start Ph.D. programs by others.

Today, it is being realized that the total system of Fellowship is not geared to equip them with Teaching Ability. While Research Methodology is taken care of during the Program, but skill development does not include Learning and Teaching methodology during these programs. Industry disconnect by the guides lead them to concentrate upon learning tools and techniques and publishing research papers. This is further pushed by guides since there is pressure upon them to publish. “3 As” become the only target. As remarked by Priyanshu Gupta and Vivek G Nair in “From "research in management" to "management of research": changing nature of doctoral programme at Indian management schools, Decision (June 2019) 46(2):169-175, “Indian doctoral student is "nothing more than a glorified research assistant, who the foreign authors actively seek out for the novelty of the data that the Indian co-authors are able to bring in".

It is rarely found that the research work of either faculty or researcher led to their being invited by the industry for consulting, forget full employment. The research got shifted to merely academic research. The quality of intake for the program, guide’s experience and qualification and processing leaves a wide gap to perform the role of faculty in Professional MBA Education program after acquiring fellowship. The intake comes primarily from engineering degree holders, who thinkthat School name matters (M.Tech from IITs and Fellow from IIM). For them MBA faculty salary appear to be reasonable and so they look for this job. Where is the mindset to be professional MBA faculty?Yet there is a craze to recruit this output as faculty in new IIMs and other B-schools.