Recently, I was thinking a lot about our management education system, one reason being my teaching stint at IIM Ahmedabad. One thought led to another, and ... I had this strong sense that the way that business schools assessed students at the MBA program had almost no connection to the way they would get assessed in "real" life, soon after they stepped out of campus.
Here is how the system works at most business schools, including top institutions like the IIMs. Each term, students take several courses, which could be all compulsory or all electives or a mix of both. These courses cover a wide gamut of topics that a typical manager is expected to be familiar with, irrespective of whatever career option they choose to pursue. In particular, the first year of a two year MBA course covers the entire spectrum of management topics as compulsory, core courses, ranging from strategy to finance; operations management to marketing; human resource management to information systems; and so on.
Courses are assessed individually, i.e. students receive grades for each course separately, usually on the basis of multiple modes of assessment including term exams, class participation, quizzes, group project/assignment, etc. An average of the grades is used to determine relative performance of the participants in a program. It is not difficult to see how this system of evaluation came about - in its basic methodology, it is no different from how assessments are carried out in an engineering or a commerce degree program. In fact, this is how high school grading system works - you study several subjects and get assessed in each of them separately for an overall average score/rank.
The issue, however, is that management is not a bunch of subjects that can be bundled together into a sum of the parts. Not only that, and most managers will vouch for it, what you "learn" on campus is rarely-ever, directly applied in real post-MBA jobs. So should MBA students have to take all the various courses that they take during the two years, particularly the first year core courses - I would say, mostly yes. It gives you a wide perspective of business and management aspects that always do come of use, in some tangential way in future. But does everyone need to be "assessed" through quizzes, mid-term exams, end-term exams, etc. in each and every one of those subjects? Absolutely not.
So what is an alternative? I have some thoughts that are in formative stages here... more discussion and debate may help shape these into something useful.
In the real business / professional world, MBAs are expected to play functional or leadership roles, handling situations that are multi-disciplinary in nature. Designing and launching a new product would require strategic & competitive input, market research, technology & operations capacity development, skills & capability building, financial planning, distribution management... phew!! Rarely would any person have the aptitude or desire to do all these types of activities in a life-time, leave alone simultaneously. It is about working in teams to solve such problems.
The model that I have in mind (right now for the first year) would involve one or two projects/business-simulations that several groups would work through a term; the problems would create situations that are consistent with the courses being taught during that term. Group members are assigned roles, as if they were functional / business managers and are expected to work together to develop appropriate solutions. Students should be assigned different roles across various projects / terms. Assessment should be based on overall class performance, group assessment by the faculty members (majority weightage) and individual peer review by team members.
The benefits that I envisage:
1. Education mirroring its purpose - If the goal of MBA education is to create better, well-rounded or multi-disciplinary managers / leaders, the above assessment system ensures that what is taught in the class is being tested for its application (and not comprehension).
2. Role play enables discovery - Many MBA students - especially those without prior work experience - have no idea what kind of a job would suit or interest them; they are mostly swayed by seniors' or public sentiment. The role play approach gives them opportunity to discover what they like more, and choose their second year courses and projects accordingly.
3. Assessment weights reflect appraisals - In many corporate performance appraisals, individual performance on KRAs contributes 30-50% towards the overall rating, the rest comes from group and company performance. Similarly, the MBA assessment should reflect how well the groups and class perform as a whole, in addition to the individual performance.
Making changes to established systems would not be easy, particularly for those that are governed by larger university rules. However, B-schools that are independent and / or deemed universities can surely experiment with some changes to the student performance evaluation system. I believe my suggested model is in the best interests of both the students and recruiters.
More suggestions are welcome.