B-schools ought to manage their diversity deficit better
There has been an increasing demand for student diversity in colleges and universities, and B-schools are no exception
There has been an increasing demand for student diversity in colleges and universities, and B-schools are no exception. Management institutions in India are working to improve diversity with every incoming batch. Rigorous group discussion and interview-based evaluation has diversity indicators to go with it. For B-schools, the aim is diversity among all stakeholders, including students, staff and faculty members. Student diversity is half the battle won, so why should we be worry about the rest?
Management education is both multi-dimensional and multi-directional. It is a judicious mixture of science, social sciences, mathematics, statistics, humanities, commerce and technology. Both hard and soft skills are essential to managerial and leadership roles. Recruiters look for a combination of quantitative, analytical and humane skills. Hence, learning both inside and outside the classroom and experiential learning are crucial for B-school students. The case-study method, group activities, flipped classrooms and learn-by-doing projects are popularly used. However, these methods enhance learning only if instructors are perfect springboard to bounce diverse ideas. Discussions become all-inclusive when instructors are capable, willing, flexible, progressive and receptive to all possible product, business or research ideas catering to all demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioural segments of a market.
India is opening its borders for top higher-education institutes across the world to set up extension campuses and Indian B-schools will have to compete head-on with globally reputed ones. Online education has already blurred boundaries; every B-school offers online certification programmes, and the market for online management education is highly competitive and accessible. In such a scenario, offline or residential programmes need to offer more than just knowledge and skills. Meanwhile, as AI threatens many mundane, mechanical and repetitive jobs, soft skills, empathy, judgement, etc, will be even more sought after. How these skills can be taught and learnt in a B-school setup will be driven by faculty diversity to a large extent.
Research has shown that communication, leadership, social and coping skills vary across genders. Similarly, people from diverse economic, social, educational and cultural backgrounds develop different world-views that businesses need to know of.
Research areas need to be more diverse and inclusive of taboo topics and domains. Diverse coverage will make research more useful, but this requires diversity among the faculty members who do it. Researchers with diverse backgrounds will be organically inclined to solving challenges experienced either by them or peer cohorts that might otherwise suffer neglect. For example, fem-tech, as a growing product category, will by default be less understood by males. Research on menstrual hygiene, care and reproductive health and wellness came into prominence only after gender diversity among researchers improved. Similarly, sex-tech as an emerging business field would need the involvement of more than one gender for discussion and innovation. Also, as student diversity increases, we need diversity among staff and faculty members to be sounding boards for specific issues, interests and campus activities. That campuses must have all-round diversity of sensitivity and sensibility goes for all educational institutes. India’s top B-schools, sadly, still lack instructors and facilitators who adequately reflect our national diversity.
It appears that the number of female faculty members in management institutes is alarmingly less than that of women who had planned academic careers. According to the All India Survey on Higher Education 2017-18 report: 4,930 males and 4,389 females were enrolled in PhD programmes in various sub-fields of business education in India. In some disciplines, women pursuing PhDs exceeded men.
India has 20 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs, many of which offer management programmes) and several premier private B-schools. However, the number of female professors in these institutes is far less than that their count of male professors. Data collected from the websites of 20 IIMs between 25 May 2022 and 29 June 2022 revealed that the total number of core male and female faculty members were around 852 and 264, respectively, while the approximate number of male and female faculty members in premier private B-schools stood at 137 and 69 respectively. The number of core male and female faculty in seven of the IITs which have their own management schools/departments stood at 125 and 58 respectively in the time frame under consideration. We did not consider adjunct professors, visiting faculty, professors emeritus, professors on deputation, and professors of practice.
The situation is even bleaker if we consider diversity of background and ethnicity. It is time we paid closer attention to the needs of modern business and entrepreneurship while hiring professionals for B-schools. Management education in India remains excessively homogenous in its human- resource composition. However, in the face of emerging competition, from online avenues to foreign B-schools that attract Indian students, our institutes offering campus education must act to diversify the experimental and experiential learning ambience that serves as a point of differentiation.
Biswajita Parida & Wallace Jacob are, respectively, an assistant professor at IIT Delhi and an associate professor at Tolani Maritime Institute, Pune.
Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
MoreLess
First Published:26 Jan 2023, 11:04 PM IST
- Top Gainers
- Top Losers
- 52 Week High