Obituary: MBA Programs

In Pakistani Higher education sector, the Management and Business Administration programs have lost the little luster they held in the 1990s, now a days an MBA graduate willingly accepts any position for a meager pay. Although the number of MBA programs and the graduates coming out of the Universities has grown exponentially over the past two decades, but the value employers used to associate with MBA degree has steadily gone down. MBAs have become like the generalists or BAs of the old, and are accepting clerical and entry level positions as BAs used to take. What went wrong, why Management Education has failed in Pakistan?

Well there could have been several reasons, above all economy, the businesses, that hired the professional managers have not grown or developed alongside the population and graduates produced in the same period. Secondly, Management programs that started with standard McGraw hill, Pearson and other foreign publishers textbooks have failed to move beyond the imported curriculum and have not been able to develop curricula according to the local employers needs. Case study method is an innovation in management education and curriculum but that too is limited to a few top ranked institutions only. Specialisations such as HR, Marketing and Finance have not evolved into full scale programs and specialised diploma programs have also not emerged. Instead various schemes of MBA such as 1.5 years, 3.5 years, Executive MBA etc have been introduced by the regulators resulting in similar degrees with different time periods and course roadmaps all competing for the same job. And finally the students, MBA has never really been able to attract toppers and high graders, rather it has been a last resort for the mediocre and weak students and of those who later became the faculty. Talking of faculty, most of the senior faculty, professors, deans, chairmen in the business schools are not business or management graduates in the first place, they are mostly economists, or people from sciences that migrated towards management teaching finding it easier or something anyone could do. As highest positions require experience and MBA programs only took root in the 1990s Pakistan we still don't have any Management Specialists at the upper echelons of management education and its administration.

Corruption and lack of transparency among the public and private institutions hinders not only fair competition and promotes rent seeking culture, it also inhibits research and thus appropriate curriculum development in the business education sector of the country. Rent seeking business culture also forces the executives to invest in human resource with social capital rather than managerial skill. This also renders the skill set owned by graduate less effective in practical application in real life business situations.

So would we now do away with management education or try a reform in teaching methods such as introduction of case teaching methods in business education or undertake a full fledged reform of business education in the country. Well the first option seems to be what our public sector and semi government universities are doing, either run the program as it is as long as some students are still applying or shut down and rollback. Second option is what HEC seems to be doing these days, establishing business education council and issuing or withholding accreditations, and promoting use of case study method within the set patterns of the old course roadmaps. Third option, however would require a more holistic change, it would require finding the avid scholars, both national and expatriates who can connect the local needs and global knowledge reservoirs to develop a singular management curriculum, as well as teachers training and program management. It would require engagement of local industry with academia at all levels in general and business education in particular.

Emergence of social classes or income groups and increasing gaps among these classes have also affected business education, as top ranked institutions take up the elites, both in income and in talent and in their islands of global business culture develop a managerial elite for the few multinationals operating in the country. Meanwhile local MBA programs churn out huge numbers of middle class students for the local businesses which are mostly family or "seth" organisations or some rent seeking operations having their core competencies elsewhere rather than in the skills held by well groomed business graduates.

Thus not just a sector specific reform but an overall reform is also a must for ensuring the revival and growth of MBA programs in the country.