Unemployable MBAs: Are tests like CAT to blame?
Top business schools in India and the rest of the world now attach less importance to standardised tests
Many MB As who have recently graduated from India’ s more than 4000 management institutes are unemployed. A news magazine claimed that “93% of Indian management graduates are ‘unemployable’. Even as we can contest the statistics, we also need to reflect seriously on what this says about the universities from where they graduated. Are standard is ed tests such as CAT to blame?
While standard is ed exams such as CAT are not solely to blame – there are sound reasons for many institutions to utilise them— the poor employment outcomes dora is eared flag about: the curricula, the faculty, the manner in which education is imparted and tested and the selection process itself.
Standardised tests do have a function in a country like India, where the student demographic is large. It performs the important task of swift and painless initial filtering of candidates. But what are we trading awayin return for institutional convenience and the seeming ‘clarity’ of the merit list?
Principally, the correlation of CAT scores by themselves with future career success has always been weak. In the radically changed, rapidly evolving competitive business envi- ronment, it is weaker still.
The skill sets that show up well on exams such as CAT and GMAT and on which students are initially chosen, increasingly do not match with industry needs.
Institutions need to prepare them to be the ‘new charioteers’ of the constantly evolving digital world. They must become agile learners, be comfortable in volatile competitive situations and update their strategies and business approaches on the fly. Unlike earlier, when students got the chance to learn“on the job”, nowadays, businesses do not always have that luxury. They require MBAs who can hit the ground running. The onus of selecting and developing MBA candidates who will flourish in this competitive environment lies with the educational institutions.
Top business schools around the world and in India have begun the process of de-emphasising standardised tests and are putting greater focus on essays, layered interviews, interactions and assessments designed to test mental agility, collaboration skills, and technology literacy.
Institutions should de vote more resources to the selection process by adopting a more comprehensive approach that allows space for individual talent and expression to emerge, as opposed to screening it out with test scores. For both institution and MBA aspirant there is one common point: To be well selected means being well placed.