Most of the business schools are managing the show by just having skeleton staff and are depending mostly on guest faculty. ``The shortage of eligible faculty is a very serious concern for management education in India, Prof Sanjay Kallapur, Senior Associate Dean, Faculty and Research, ISB told The New Manager here.
While the premier schools are able to attract talent to some extent, the tier II institutions are where the students are worst hit by non-availability of quality staff.
``The shortage of faculty is due to lack of research focus. If there are no Ph.D or equivalent research programmes, it is not possible to build a team of teachers,’’ Prof Kallapur said.
Though most of the Indian universities do have recognized Ph.D programmes there are very few takers as management graduates prefer remunerative jobs to research and teaching.
As per All India Council of Technical Education norms, the minimum eligibility to become an assistant professor in business school is an First Class in MBA.
But, there is a problem, according to Prof Mohd. Masood Ahmed, President of Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS). ``A first class MBA graduate will get a good job in the industry immediately. So nobody is coming to take up teaching,’’ he said.
As a doctorate is a must for qualifying as an associate professor along with some experience, there has been a shortage of middle level teachers as well.
``As a result, the management colleges are unable to get the mandatory number of teachers. As per AICTE norms, a batch of 60 students should have a minimum of eight faculty. But on an average there are hardly five teachers in many colleges. This is also impacting quality of education,’’ Mr Ahmed said.
Dr V. Venkata Ramana, Dean, School of Management Studies, University of Hyderabad says mushrooming growth of business schools in the last couple of years is also a problem.
``No regulator, let it be AICTE or the University Grants Commission has a clue on what is happening or any perspective on this issues,’’ he said.
WAY FORWARD
Experts say that concerted efforts are needed to bridge the gap in the demand and supply of qualified faculty and improve quality of education.
``Good inputs for research programmes, stipends and scholarships will motivate people to take up research and teaching in management. The talented students/researchers have to be weaned away from joining corporates to take up teaching jobs with suitable rewards,’’ Dr Ramana said.
Efforts are also on to improve quality of existing faculty. On its part AIMS has launched a special drive to train at least 1,000 business school teachers.
``So far, we have trained 585 teachers. The training programmes for the remaining will be completed by end of next month,’’ Dr Ahmed said.
Another programme, called Management 2050, would also be launched to create and groom faculty for the fast-changing requirements of management education by the association soon.
According to AIMS data, there are about 4,000 business schools in the country. Of these one-fourth are located in Andhra Pradesh. The total faculty strength is around 30,000 and there is an immediate room for 15,000 teachers.