Placements Across Tier-2 B-Schools Slump, Only 18% Get Jobs: Survey
If you have not been lucky enough to secure a seat in the prestigious IIMs or one of the few top-notch business schools such as the FMS or XLRI, you should be worried.
A survey across second-rung business schools across India has found that only 18 per cent MBA students have got jobs at the end of the two-year course in 2014. What's even more disappointing is salary packages for campus offers in such B-schools have dropped by 40-45 per cent as compared to last year. (Also read: Salary hikes in 2014 to be lowest in a decade)
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) survey says, "economic slowdown, stalling of new projects and investors' apathy towards several key sectors like infrastructure, hotels, financial services, realty and retail have led to drying of job opportunities for a large numbers of students from the B-category business schools."
India is struggling through its longest period of sub-5 per cent economic growth since the 1980s. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that economic growth averaging 8 per cent is required to generate jobs for the increasing numbers of youth joining the workforce. Some 20 crore people will reach working age over the next two decades.
The sluggish economy has not only killed jobs, but several B-schools are closing down as parents and students are rethinking on investing two years and several lakhs in a course that may not lead to employment, Assocham notes. (Read the related story here)
"More than 220 B-schools have already closed down in 2013 in cities like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Lucknow and Dehradun. Another 95 are struggling for their survival," DS Rawat, secretary general of Assocham said.
The apathy towards MBA courses is not restricted to second-rung B-schools. Candidates applying for the common admission test (CAT), for entry to elite B-schools such as the IIMs, have been declining for the last two years, Assocham said.
"The total number of CAT applicants stood at 1.85 lakh in 2014 compared with 1.94 lakh in 2013 even as MBA seats in India grew almost four-fold from 95,000 in 2006-07 to 4.68 lakh in 2013," the survey noted.
Second-rung B-schools in India are also guilty of compromising on quality of education, Assocham says.
"Institutes only focus on filling up seats and do not consider the quality of students at the time of intake... they (institutes) will have to improve their infrastructure, train the faculty, work on industry linkages and spend money on research and knowledge and focus more on making students employable rather than employed," Mr Rawat says.
(With inputs from agencies)