The MBA story at Pune

We went to Pune for my wife's MBA institute's alumni meet. The next day I met a friend of mine whose spouse is Dean Academics for another MBA institute there.

These meetings and visits showed me a reality of India's MBA story that the gushing stories of the business press hardly covers. Pune currently has 90 odd management institutes and they operate almost totally on the basis of visiting faculty and guest lectures from people who work in the industry there.

Earlier these people used to be from the thriving industries of Pune, the Bajajs, the Kirloskars, the Thermaxs and others. Nowadays, they are also from Pune's booming IT and BPO sector. In fact, which awesome mechanical talent already there, CAD/CAM firms find Pune a great place to start off.

Rumors have it that some visiting faculty members earn more from their moonlighting jobs than their day job in this place. As someone said "One of the executives has kept an administrative assistant at home whose only job is to schedule classes at 4 institutes in the morning as he goes to work, and 4 classes in the evening."

Each 90 min class pays Rs 1000. And each 3 credit course is 20 classes long. That's Rs. 20,000 from one MBA institute in three months. People can easily make some really heavy duty money doing teaching in Pune. No, you don't need a Ph.D. to teach there and you are not required to do research.

Some people claim that if the focus of the MBA course is to give a life-like picture of corporate life, then this is the best way to go ahead with it. Of course, there are no original case studies for a teacher but plenty of real life examples they can use.

Hmm. I think I should start moonlighting some HR and OB courses at Pune over the weekend ;-)