Each year 500,000 students aspire to an MBA career, sitting for any of the various entrance tests. Only less than 5 percent of them will make the cut to any of the top 50 B-schools. That leaves more than 95 percent looking for options that are less than the best. What are the various courses of action for them? They may join any one of the remaining 3,000 B-schools in the country. But is doing a course in any of them really worth it?

Elements Akademia recently conducted a survey among more than 4,000 students across 200 tier III/IV MBA colleges in 20 cities in India. Their aim was to understand the state of management education in such colleges. Their findings only confirmed what we already know.

If you look beyond the top 50 B-schools, quality dips significantly across all key parameters. The quality of teaching is extremely poor. Most faculty members are themselves without any serious corporate exposure and are poorly paid. Interaction with the corporate world is extremely poor be it industry visits, internships, guest lectures, or inputs for curriculum design.

Campus placements in terms of both quantity and quality leave much to be desired. Most Tier II schools place only 30–40% of their students; even these placements are in lower-management cadres where the monthly salaries are in the Rs. 12-18,000 range.
So how should aspirants select the right B-school, if they don’t get a call from the top 30? There are five critical parameters on which a college should rank reasonably well:

1. Profile of promoters: If a college is run by politicians, real estate sharks, or liquor barons then it is very likely to have a profile that is rather different from that of those run by professionals from top B-schools or corporate houses.

2. Profile of full-time faculty: Since the IIMs have such a strong brand equity there is a temptation among many B-schools to advertise their faculty as comprising of IIM alumni and experts from abroad. Such members of the faculty may not be teaching full-time credit courses at all.

3. Profile of placements: The average salary of the previous batch and the campus placement rate  are good indicators of the quality of education.

4. Student satisfaction: Pay a visit to the campus and chat with a few students about their experience in the college and their assessment of the faculty. Reach out to them in their hostels and cafeteria where they are likely to feel comfortable enough to speak frankly.

5. Infrastructure: When you enter the campus do you feel that it could be a good B-school? Is there a residential hostel facility – all top MBA programs across the world are fully residential, since most learning happens outside the classroom.

And beware of hollow advertisements. Personally visit the college and the hostel, interact with old students and full-time faculty, and then decide.

But such consumer awareness does not end with just the B-school selection. Once inside, we need to do multiple things beyond academics to become employable. The AICTE found that less than 25% of our MBAs are employable. In any good B-school, students generally spend only 40% of the time on academics. Another 40% is spent on co-curricular and extra-curricular activities that improve grooming, confidence, communication skills, and managerial skills; it includes exposure to managerial experience that help build a CV (the last 20% time is spent on fun and networking).

So grab every chance to lead functional clubs, read management books/journals such as HBR, enroll in remedial communication classes, develop expertise in a few chosen sectors, take part in presentations in other B-Schools, network actively, do live projects to get real-life experience, even start new ventures and become an entrepreneur in the campus itself… But remember that the real learning is outside the class!