Male, single MBA wants tomeet . . .

TO understand a country’s values and culture you need only look to the lonely hearts pages in newspapers, where people advertise their qualities in the hope of wooing a partner.

India is no exception. From caste and community to religion and complexion, matrimonial adverts reveal division and discrimination in this vast and complex nation.

But there is something else that has become a prominent feature in classified adverts in India: an MBA.

“Education definitely is more powerful in terms of signalling than potentially the profession you’re in,” says Gourav Rakshit, COO at Shaadi.com, one of India’s largest matrimonial websites with about 10 000 registrations a day.

“I guess it goes to breeding — people see that as a very powerful indicator of the individual or family they’re marrying into,” says Rakshit.

In a country where arranged marriages are common, potential earnings determine an individual’s eligibility, and an MBA is thought to boost employability. But that may be a misconception.

Management colleges have mushroomed in India, with the total intake rising from 114 803 students in 2008 to 313 920 in 2012, according to data from the All India Council for Technical Education, the accreditation body.

There is now an oversupply of MBAs in the jobs market. But while graduates from lowertier schools find their degrees do not guarantee them wellpaid jobs, they do give them something else — a boost in the marriage market.

“You’ve done an MBA degree — maybe you’re not doing anything after it — but your parents can say my son is an MBA,” says a student at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Hyderabad. “It is different to saying my son has a BA — a BA now is nothing.”

In a survey of 20 000 distance education MBA students, the Parthenon Group, an education consultancy, found that value in the marriage market was among the top three reasons why people chose to study their programme.

“When you talk about tiertwo or tier-three programmes, you’re not certain about getting a job,” says Amit Garga, a senior principal at Parthenon. “The returns are beyond a job, and in India the marriage market tends to be one of them.”

But as more graduate with an MBA every year, its value as a social marker is diminishing.

The returns go beyond a job . . . marriage tends to be one of them

“If one of the indicators [of], or a proxy for esteem is scarcity, then 20 years ago when you said you had an MBA people would sit up,” says Bibek Banerjee, director of the Institute of Management Technology Ghaziabad.

But as the idea of a wife working outside home becomes more accepted in modern India, an MBA reassures a groom and his family that, if necessary, the prospective bride can support the family.

From a female perspective, advertising these qualifications when searching for a partner sends a more nuanced signal.

“You’re clearly trying to communicate that you don’t belong to that social class where women are expected to cook for their family and look after the children,” Banerjee says. — © The Financial Times