Talking about B-schools, K. Ramkumar, Executive Director, ICICI Bank, spoke of the main questions for which he has been searching answers: Why were B-schools set up? Who do they serve? How do we evaluate their fulfillment of purpose and their efficacy? Based on his association with B-schools for over 20 years, he gave an analysis that is summarized below.

If we assume that the chief purpose of B-schools is to produce entrepreneurs and business managers, then, according to him, this objective has hardly been achieved. He looks at how B-schools sell themselves. Do they talk about the value proposition of their unique curriculum, quality of faculty and their accomplishments; the pedagogy, rigor, and discipline in skill building; the quality of internship and the guidance received; or their high standards of assessing proficiency? Or do they say: we are the best placement agency, hence come to us? The emphasis is entirely on the latter.

What is disappointing is that the faculty at most B-schools keep boasting of the high price at which they sell their products. The message seems to be that price has little relation to absolute quality. In a demand-outstripped market, inflation rules and even mediocrity fetches a fortune. All the more so when old boys’ clubs of most top B-schools lobby to propagate their gene pool and create dominance for the alma mater in the corporate world—a Darwinian necessity.

Ramkumar commented on what happens in the last semester at B-schools. The focus seems to be solely on placement, exploiting the demand-supply gap, pushing up the price through day slotting, and ensuring that even the last mediocre product finds a placement—all this with the objective of claiming that “we are sold-out.” Things have come to such a pass that even the B-school directors and faculty feel disempowered to change focus. He adds, “The placement procedure browbeats recruiters by not permitting a genuine selection process that good governance dictates, and reversing the process of buy and sell where the seller demands that purchase be made without any meaningful quality testing” and asks, “Why will anyone learn in a B-school when ‘placement’ is guaranteed by the demand supply gap?”

The Placement scenario is such that young recruits at companies come with an exaggerated self-image and then spend the next five years in search of their real worth, moving from one organization to another. The recruiters in their effort to seem amiable flatter and inflate the egos of the young students. Such worship of the new graduates sets them up for future shock, when their sense of self-importance is exposed for what it is after recruitment. As a result these youngsters spend their best five years in self-doubt and anxiety.

The glimmer of hope is that some B-school directors have taken charge. It is time the recruiters act responsibly and support these directors.