Mapping & Alignment of Management Education
“Most B-Schools attempt to map & align Management Education for Effective Corporate Placements, but in a fragmented way, probably based on their assumptions and experiences. We know what the consumer (industry) wants as we interact with them. However, we miss to create the requirement synergy with the products (our students) when we map the needs with the syllabus, and this is vital” say IPER’s Group Director, Dr. (Prof.) Amarjeet Singh Khalsa.
The much sought synergy between EXCELLENT ACADEMICS and EXCELLENT CORPORATE seeks a re-alignment from time to time and this needs to be seen as a management process. B-Schools have always felt that the mapping & alignment of Education, a process of necessity, should be cyclic and have a top-down bias. Some B-Schools may agree to differ /disagree, but lets be fair and accept in case they are able to meet the ever changing industry requirements.
The best way, it seems would be to have a framework to create different sets of ‘Strategy Management Office’ with students, faculties and industry for a week or so every year. Just as in an industry, a senior faculty member, should lead and coordinate the process—a responsibility for the Strategy Management Office (SMO). Office to deliberate, drafts plans for possible alignments and its execution process. As the day progresses, the plans, execution flows are presented to be deliberated upon ,voted and earned or it goes to the thrash.
On similar lines, IPER saw a two day Students Workshop conducted on Jan 28, 2014. The brainstorming session involved students to investigate the gap starting from a critical analysis of methods and practices adopted, core capabilities acquired by those practices and mapping those core capabilities with the ones required by management professionals globally.
Excerpts of the Session:
IPER-PGDM students on ways to re-align and further improve the placements.
Mapping & Alignment of Management Education for Effective Corporate Placements workshop series for students had a very specific reason, i.e. express freely and students won’t be biased by the result of 1 st workshop which was organized for IPER faculty members only.This workshop gives insight from the other dimension – the student perspective on the state of placement activities embedded in IPER’s Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) and find the ways to further improve the placement record for the betterment of students as well as organization
Following are the four goals achieved, as an outcome of the workshop:
1. Create pointers which students thought will be helpful towards getting them placed from IPER Campus placement programme
2. Figure out a thoughtful understanding of the student concerns, past experience of IPER’s senior student’s with placement programmes: student’s expectations regarding job offers & their attraction,getting placed, support from career placement team along with academics team, etc…
3. Problems and potential solutions for running, sustaining & improving corporate placement for students
4. Prepare the “Vision Document” and “Action Plan” based on it.
Another outcome,arguably the best of this workshop remains, as an open sharing activity that encouraged all to participate & contribute. To conclude, workshop saw the students adjust their previous knowledge or understanding, accommodate new information and increase their levels of awareness.
~RL
