A MUST READ FOR ALL NON ENGINEERING MBA ASPIRANTS, CAT ORGANISORS & HR HEADS
Wrong foundations create faulty buildings & precisely this has been happening with the MBA selection process in India depriving non technical stream & girl students aspiring to become MBAs. In the year 2000 at IIM Ahmedabad-70% were Engineers & 30% were non engineers. This dangerous dominance of engineers in IIMs further rose to such an extent that just after 10 years in 2010 at IIM Ahmedabad, 94.4% engineers got admitted & merely 5.6% non engineers could seek admission. This proves that the coterie controlling IIMs is completely dominated by engineers turned MBAs who design the CAT structure, & specially the quantitative section with a strong bias in favour of engineers & consequentially deprive lakhs of commerce, management, economics & other non- technical stream graduates of their legitimate right to enter IIMs.
When a student completes his high schooling, he has an ambition & joins a course as per his liking, desire & aspirations for future. If his honest intention is to do MBA & work in the field of Banking & Financial services then he will definitely opt for commerce, management, economics etc., for graduation & on the other hand those students who want to become engineers in future will definitely join engineering graduation course. But, ridiculously during the engineering course, they are lured by monetary greed of high MBA salaries and the faulty and biased structure of CAT further propels engineers to continuously crowd out candidates from other streams. Government spends billions of rupees in the form of subsidies and incentives to promote technical education & these engineering graduates misuse government funds by joining banking and financial services, which amounts to fraudulent activity & a massive corruption in education.
If not GMAT, then at least model the CAT on the lines of GMAT which is perfectly balanced, and unbiased with equal emphasis on logical reasoning, verbal & quantitative skills. Besides, two essays also carry significant weightage. Why the most sought after B –Schools such as Harvard, Columbia, Stern, Wharton, Yale, Stanford follow GMAT for admissions? Because they know the importance, necessity, authenticity, quality and consequences of a diverse background in the class. In Stanford, 36% students are engineers & 64% non-engineers. In Harvard, 33% students are engineers & 67% non-engineers. Benchmarking studies have shown that a student who gets a high score of 720 in GMAT will typically get around 92%ile in CAT, proving that 92%ile in CAT is adequate quantitative & verbal proficiency; and beyond that, IIMs should look at other factors such as leadership, communication, expository writing, motivation, people skills, and above all, the student’s knowledge in the field of finance, commerce and management. With inclusion of these factors, a 92%iler will be far better than a current 100 %iler. Had GMAT been the admission criteria, then even in India the ratio of non-technical to technical would have been same in the IIMs as it is in Harvard or Stanford. Every year, out of a few lakh non- engineering students, even if 1% are brilliant, which amounts to a few thousand, then they certainly deserve to enter IIM’s.
Thanks to IIM Calcutta professor Jankiraman Moorthy, convener of CAT 2011 who has at least made some welcome changes in the pattern of CAT 2011 by not allowing students to shift between sections. Every year pattern changes but nobody dares to change the content, with the fear that the technical stream will loose their dominance in financial world and other deserving candidates with gender equality will enter the IIMs. Moorthy clearly admits that had the exam been clearly in his hands, he would have introduced “writing component” in CAT, like in GMAT to identify writing skills of the candidates; and few more changes to find other ways to get more brilliant, value oriented and students with value ethics. It proves the dearth of these above mentioned qualities in the current IIM students, which is indirectly confessed by Moorthy. He further admits that till now, IIMs had most of the successful candidates with skewed efficiency and skewed scores. Many have suggested in the past to implement low cut-offs for non-engineering students and girls.
How a person with engineering background, just studying management for 2 years, heads banking and financial services? Let’s take an example of a bank and a financial services company. In YES BANK, out of 10 directors, 5 are engineering graduates, 1 – BE mechanical, 1 BSc., 1 Maths, one law and just one commerce graduate. In case of EDELWEISS, out of 10 directors, 2 are pure engineers, one is chemical engineer (head of their life insurance dept) , one is electronics engineer, one is electrical engineer, and the other is metallurgical engineer (co-heads of their asset management dept), 3 are commerce graduates and 1 is CA & law graduate. Its shocking that in these two core banking and financial services, out of 20 directors, 13 are purely technical & what are these metallurgical, electrical , chemical, electronic engineers and Bsc graduates doing here? Why did they graduate in these streams if they wanted to work in the field of banking and finance?!! Its just monetary greed, faulty CAT pattern, and more so, the real culprits are also many irresponsible human resource heads who irrelevantly recruit engineering graduates to financial sector.
These engineering graduates completing MBA could be recruited to any sector except banking and financial sector. They have a plethora of sectors such as manufacturing, engineering, capital goods, pharma, chemical, power, telecom, refineries, oil drilling, electronic and electrical equipment etc., & these sectors would benefit more with their combined engineering and MBA expertise. But, what a pity!!. One can imagine the quantum of technical graduates working at the other levels of hierarchy of these financial organizations- depriving non- engineering graduates of their rightful place. Spare at least one sector for non- engineering students as they cannot work on machines whereas engineers can.
Recently, SCMHRD Pune (flagship institute of Symbiosis) introduced MBA in Infrastructure Management in which only civil, electrical & mechanical engineers are eligible to apply. Now if this is the prerequisite condition for MBA in Infrastructure Management, then the eligibility criteria for all PGDM courses in IIMs and other Management Institutes (as well as MBA in Finance, Banking etc.,) should strictly be graduation from non- engineering streams. FMS is worst & more biased than CAT. CAT at least has 2 sections now to balance Maths with English But in FMS, out of approx. 200 questions, Engineering students with skewed scores & skewed efficiency just attempt maths & get a good percentile with no English proficiency at all. FMS Entrance Exam should therefore be banned.
All this proves that there is something terribly wrong with CAT structure leading to disappointment, confusion & hysteria. In the light of these crystal clear facts & figures, non-technical stream students and girls must urgently unite to form an association to protest against this injustice & file a petition to secure rightful place in the financial world for the current & future generations which, up till now, has been cunningly occupied by technical streams.
Wrong foundations create faulty buildings & precisely this has been happening with the MBA selection process in India depriving non technical stream & girl students aspiring to become MBAs. In the year 2000 at IIM Ahmedabad-70% were Engineers & 30% were non engineers. This dangerous dominance of engineers in IIMs further rose to such an extent that just after 10 years in 2010 at IIM Ahmedabad, 94.4% engineers got admitted & merely 5.6% non engineers could seek admission. This proves that the coterie controlling IIMs is completely dominated by engineers turned MBAs who design the CAT structure, & specially the quantitative section with a strong bias in favour of engineers & consequentially deprive lakhs of commerce, management, economics & other non- technical stream graduates of their legitimate right to enter IIMs.
When a student completes his high schooling, he has an ambition & joins a course as per his liking, desire & aspirations for future. If his honest intention is to do MBA & work in the field of Banking & Financial services then he will definitely opt for commerce, management, economics etc., for graduation & on the other hand those students who want to become engineers in future will definitely join engineering graduation course. But, ridiculously during the engineering course, they are lured by monetary greed of high MBA salaries and the faulty and biased structure of CAT further propels engineers to continuously crowd out candidates from other streams. Government spends billions of rupees in the form of subsidies and incentives to promote technical education & these engineering graduates misuse government funds by joining banking and financial services, which amounts to fraudulent activity & a massive corruption in education.
If not GMAT, then at least model the CAT on the lines of GMAT which is perfectly balanced, and unbiased with equal emphasis on logical reasoning, verbal & quantitative skills. Besides, two essays also carry significant weightage. Why the most sought after B –Schools such as Harvard, Columbia, Stern, Wharton, Yale, Stanford follow GMAT for admissions? Because they know the importance, necessity, authenticity, quality and consequences of a diverse background in the class. In Stanford, 36% students are engineers & 64% non-engineers. In Harvard, 33% students are engineers & 67% non-engineers. Benchmarking studies have shown that a student who gets a high score of 720 in GMAT will typically get around 92%ile in CAT, proving that 92%ile in CAT is adequate quantitative & verbal proficiency; and beyond that, IIMs should look at other factors such as leadership, communication, expository writing, motivation, people skills, and above all, the student’s knowledge in the field of finance, commerce and management. With inclusion of these factors, a 92%iler will be far better than a current 100 %iler. Had GMAT been the admission criteria, then even in India the ratio of non-technical to technical would have been same in the IIMs as it is in Harvard or Stanford. Every year, out of a few lakh non- engineering students, even if 1% are brilliant, which amounts to a few thousand, then they certainly deserve to enter IIM’s.
Thanks to IIM Calcutta professor Jankiraman Moorthy, convener of CAT 2011 who has at least made some welcome changes in the pattern of CAT 2011 by not allowing students to shift between sections. Every year pattern changes but nobody dares to change the content, with the fear that the technical stream will loose their dominance in financial world and other deserving candidates with gender equality will enter the IIMs. Moorthy clearly admits that had the exam been clearly in his hands, he would have introduced “writing component” in CAT, like in GMAT to identify writing skills of the candidates; and few more changes to find other ways to get more brilliant, value oriented and students with value ethics. It proves the dearth of these above mentioned qualities in the current IIM students, which is indirectly confessed by Moorthy. He further admits that till now, IIMs had most of the successful candidates with skewed efficiency and skewed scores. Many have suggested in the past to implement low cut-offs for non-engineering students and girls.
How a person with engineering background, just studying management for 2 years, heads banking and financial services? Let’s take an example of a bank and a financial services company. In YES BANK, out of 10 directors, 5 are engineering graduates, 1 – BE mechanical, 1 BSc., 1 Maths, one law and just one commerce graduate. In case of EDELWEISS, out of 10 directors, 2 are pure engineers, one is chemical engineer (head of their life insurance dept) , one is electronics engineer, one is electrical engineer, and the other is metallurgical engineer (co-heads of their asset management dept), 3 are commerce graduates and 1 is CA & law graduate. Its shocking that in these two core banking and financial services, out of 20 directors, 13 are purely technical & what are these metallurgical, electrical , chemical, electronic engineers and Bsc graduates doing here? Why did they graduate in these streams if they wanted to work in the field of banking and finance?!! Its just monetary greed, faulty CAT pattern, and more so, the real culprits are also many irresponsible human resource heads who irrelevantly recruit engineering graduates to financial sector.
These engineering graduates completing MBA could be recruited to any sector except banking and financial sector. They have a plethora of sectors such as manufacturing, engineering, capital goods, pharma, chemical, power, telecom, refineries, oil drilling, electronic and electrical equipment etc., & these sectors would benefit more with their combined engineering and MBA expertise. But, what a pity!!. One can imagine the quantum of technical graduates working at the other levels of hierarchy of these financial organizations- depriving non- engineering graduates of their rightful place. Spare at least one sector for non- engineering students as they cannot work on machines whereas engineers can.
Recently, SCMHRD Pune (flagship institute of Symbiosis) introduced MBA in Infrastructure Management in which only civil, electrical & mechanical engineers are eligible to apply. Now if this is the prerequisite condition for MBA in Infrastructure Management, then the eligibility criteria for all PGDM courses in IIMs and other Management Institutes (as well as MBA in Finance, Banking etc.,) should strictly be graduation from non- engineering streams. FMS is worst & more biased than CAT. CAT at least has 2 sections now to balance Maths with English But in FMS, out of approx. 200 questions, Engineering students with skewed scores & skewed efficiency just attempt maths & get a good percentile with no English proficiency at all. FMS Entrance Exam should therefore be banned.
All this proves that there is something terribly wrong with CAT structure leading to disappointment, confusion & hysteria. In the light of these crystal clear facts & figures, non-technical stream students and girls must urgently unite to form an association to protest against this injustice & file a petition to secure rightful place in the financial world for the current & future generations which, up till now, has been cunningly occupied by technical streams.