Ajit Rangnekar, the Indian School of Business's new dean.

 

What are your challenges given the way your predecessor resigned?

As a human being I feel sorry that Professor Rao (M B M Rao who resigned as the dean after the Satyam fallout; he was an independent director on Satyam's board) had to step down. I had and continue to have enormous respect for him. But as a school it has had no impact on the ISB. We are continuing to grow exactly as planned three months ago or six months ago. Our plans, intentions and achievements are still the same. So we will go with the Mohali campus, expansion of students and creating new centres of excellence.

How soon will the Mohali campus come up?

We are aiming for 2011, but it could be in 2012. The ISB has increased its class to 560 students this year. How will you overcome the challenge of giving placements to so many students given the current economic scenario? This is one thing we really need to start moving away from. Educational institutions and society at large need to have a very strong debate on this.

What is the purpose of educational institutions? Are we placement agencies or are we educational institutions?

I very strongly and passionately believe that we should not be considered as placement agencies. Unfortunately, the only thing the media reports about educational institutions are the salaries that our students get. So you (the media) are using a very wrong parameter to judge an institution.

You people emphasise the salary that one student gets from whatever company. Is that the criteria?

Instead, the focus should be on the contribution of that educational institution to knowledge, what is the contribution of the alumni of that educational institution not to industry but to society at large. Unless we don't move into those spheres we are going to get into these wrong choices.

 

But what has blurred this thin line that separates educational institutes from being providers of high quality education to someone who provide jobs? Shouldn't institutions also take part of the blame? What factors have led to educational institutions being perceived as placement agencies?

The educational institutions are also responsible for blurring this line and there are a number of reasons why this line is blurred. One is partly an assorted mentality. Those of us who grew in the shortage mentality -- you guys are too young to know what that means -- have had this oh-my-god-I-must-find-a-job issue. It is a survival issue. When Nehru first initiated these (educational institutions like the IITs) they were temples of learning, temples of modern India. They were for transforming society. Unfortunately, apart from what happened in the 1950s and 1960s very, very few high quality institutes got started in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Some three to four lakh (300,000 to 400,000) people apply to the IITs and only 3,000 get in. What kind of a ridiculous shortage is that? That shortage has created a desperate thought that come what may you have to get into these institutions. So with this process taking roots the whole process of education got killed. From Class VIII itself you send your child to a coaching class or to Kota (where coaching classes that help prepare students for competitive examinations for institutions like the IIT are located) where whether the child likes it or not s/he has to get into either engineering or medicine. I think an average Indian parent would commit suicide than rather accept that the child is going to an arts college to learn history. Especially if a boy says so. No Indian family would want to say that my son is studying history. They would rather send him to a fourth grade, useless, engineering college. So it's our wrong mentality. We have forgotten that education is for the enrichment of the mind. That's why we are putting a lot of emphasis on giving the message out that we value people with a non-engineering background. We want people who have done arts, literature, sports or have a armed forces background.
Because of that shortage you just put four, five, six years of your life to just get into these institutions and then expect a return. Also, perversely what has happened is why are people going to the IITs? Not because they want to do engineering, but they want a job. And why is that happening? Because the IT industry is recruiting in large numbers. But the IT industry can as well take a history graduate or a science graduate, anybody who can think logically, and train them in seven months or so. That's what happens in the rest of the world.
In that sense the growth of the BPO industry was a big boon to India because a young person who could speak English, could communicate well suddenly had an opportunity to get a decent living.

Do you handhold students to start ventures?

We don't handhold our students. Full stop. We think they are adults and they are going to be leaders. We hope we never have to do that because I think that will be a failure. However, we have always been very supportive of our students starting their own ventures. If some of our students want to go for start-ups we will fund them. In addition, we are also encouraging our students to work with start-up companies if they are not starting on their own and have a share in the long-term benefit of start-ups. Apart from this one of the most fundamental philosophy that we inculcate in our students is that it is important to do good. And you should make money while doing good. Today the root of all the problems is that we thought of first making money, becoming greedy about making money, becoming stupidly greedy about it, taking idiotic risks. We want to change this. It is not wrong to make money. I don't know how many people will take it though.

 

Source: Rediff.com