Rethinking MBA schooling

Imagine a teacher with years of teaching experience but no corporate or other relevant real life experience/attachment (except as a customer) lecturing in a class of part-time MBA students (working executives) on how to be more competent in managerial job. There is no case study but a book of decade old. There is hardly any experience sharing facility just one way communication of teaching through archaic lecture method. How much effectiveness can you expect from this right input (working students) but wrong processor (teacher without relevant work experience)?
Think of another situation where an instructor with enough real life corporate or other relevant work experience teaching a class of full-time MBA students (with no work experience/attachment). The instructor intends to adopt the case study method and wants to make the class participatory. Unfortunately, as the students do not have real life work experience, they cannot share among themselves either. In this case, what would be your expectation of output from this wrong input (students having no work experience or attachment) and right processor (instructor with relevant work experience)?
Consider a teacher with decade of teaching experience but no corporate or other relevant real life experience (except as a customer) lecturing in a class of full-time MBA students (with no work experience or attachment). Isn't it like a coach who never played cricket is caching a group of people in class room with a manual on how to be a Sakib? I do believe you can easily realise what will happen in this wrong input and wrong processor situation.
Now, assume a situation where the instructor having enough relevant work experience/attachment facilitating a class of part-time MBA students (working executives) with case study method. The instructor facilitates and guides the whole experience sharing process of the participants. Here the right input meets the right processor. In this scenario, wouldn't you expect more effectiveness than earlier three?
Is management a science or an art? I would say management is a practice and it cannot be learned by only reading books or listening to lectures. Here the instructor with relevant experience or attachment will act as a facilitator and this approach is very much effective in case of part-time MBA programme of full-time or part-time employed people. The leading business schools in the world including IIM, India are following case study method but our business schools are still following the so called lecture method. Unfortunately, this is missing in most of the business schools in our country. Due to this less effective teaching the skill gap is a big concern. As a result, many of our employers are not happy with this business schooling approach.
Yes, we can learn a lot of things in our contemporary MBA programmes. But in most of the cases it is not managerial expertise with leadership focus rather a kind of technical training of business fundamentals which should be taught in BBA but no way in MBA. Of course there should be a difference between teaching a set of technical skills and managerial skills for producing competent managers. Apart from B Schools, many institutions are providing training in technical skills of different disciplines such as accounting, finance and data analytics etc. These valuable skills can be offered in a variety of formats, including online and blended learning.
Business schools' fundamental purpose of offering MBA should be to enhance the quality of leadership capacity in society. This managerial leadership requires a different delivery approach, which relies on more face-to-face interaction, collaboration and discussion. The case method is "magnificent" for most things, but there are a few things that you can only learn by doing. Think about the model of medical education: no surgeon would be equipped to operate without hands-on practice, but that practical experience would be far less meaningful without prior study of anatomy. Likewise, business education must follow this approach especially for MBA.
The International Masters in Practicing Management (IMPM) programme, an initiative of Henry Mintzberg, follows some practical principles in their management schooling. According to him, management education should be restricted to practicing managers; the classroom should leverage the managers' experience in their education. Insightful theories help managers make sense of their experience. "Sharing" their competencies raises the managers' consciousness about their practice. Beyond reflection in the classroom comes learning from impact on the organisation. All of the above should be blended into a process of "experienced reflection."
The idea of coming to university and doing workbook learning in MBA class is so laughable. Realising the point, the demand of full-time MBA is going down and that of Part-time MBA is going up. Many leading B Schools are struggling to run this full-time MBA and some of them have discontinued this offering.
As most of business schools are not providing the type of managers required, companies with sufficient resources are becoming more inclined to train their own in-house people. Larger hi-tech companies, for example, have their own campuses. A lot of companies that are enthusiastic about the book and they will take the ideas into account when designing their own programmes. The British Aerospace programme was inspired by the IMPM and with a lot of involvement of academics and academic institutions.
For most effective managerial education a concerted effort of business schools and corporate is a must. Managers need to step back from the hectic managerial work setting aside some more time to reflect in a thoughtful atmosphere. Faculty members of business schools also need to enhance their corporate attachment for having the practical world exposure. Contextual management approach is imperative for managerial effectiveness and this is only possible being a part of that context as much as possible. Yes, nobody can create as thoughtful an atmosphere as universities when they are attuned to what managers need and based on exhaustive empirical research.
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Nitin Nohria, the Dean of Harvard Business School, said, "The biggest challenge is a lot of people are asking the question whether they need to go to business school at all. The golden era of business education ... is 1950 to 2000, where it was almost considered, if you want to accelerate your career, you'd better have an M.B.A. That sense of necessity of an M.B.A. has shifted." Mr. Nohria also said that the rise of executive MBA has been the answer to the increasing demand of short courses, and the rise of one-year MBA programmes as supposed to two-year. The US demand for two-year MBAs has declined 20% from year 2000. Demand for specialised master's program is growing faster than two-year MBA. If this is the scenario of MBA degrees in the USA, the leader of modern business schooling, we can easily comprehend what is going to happen here in our country too. So, isn't it  time to rethink our MBA schooling?

The writer is pursuing Executive MBA at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) of Dhaka University, email:[email protected]