Not that long ago, almost every Indian parent’s dream for their children (never mind what the children wanted) was for them to become doctors and engineers. I bucked the trend, much to my parents’ dismay.

The old molds and attitudes continue to exist but we’ve created new ones in this country to accommodate India’s growing economy. When India opened its doors to international trade and investment, it brought about opportunities in the private sector that previously hadn’t existed. The typical trajectory for a student finishing high school these days is to go from an engineering degree (preferably at the best Indian Institute of Technology you can get into) directly to an Masters of Business Administrations (at an Indian Institute of Management, Indian School of Business, or, if your dreams come true, Harvard).

In Mumbai, where I currently live, MBAs are a dime a dozen. These are bright, hard-working kids, and all of them want to get into lucrative private sector jobs. Now, there is nothing wrong with that aspiration. The high demand for graduates of top-notch MBA programs and the promise of fat pay packages from the private sector in areas such as investment banking, private equity, and management consultancy fuels the supply. As an economist, I have nothing against this idea, either. But what is striking is the fact that increasingly firms seem to be streaming people much like the educational system in this country. Speaking from personal experience during the course of my own job search, the human resources focus for many top firms, including the top recruitment and executive search firms, seems to be almost entirely MBA-driven.

This situation becomes frustrating for someone who doesn’t fit into a mold but has aspirations in the private sector.

The question I’ve been asking myself is whether the success of a company solely rests on its MBA talent pool. Is it possible for a company in India to be successful if it has a diverse set of people coming from various backgrounds such as the arts, sciences, and the humanities? Given that India itself is a diverse country and we pride ourselves on being so, shouldn’t the corporate sector reflect this? Surely we can add a bit of desi spice to the Anglo-American model? Isn’t it possible that the non-MBA fields also teach you a thing or two about being a leader, a manager, and a successful member of a team in the corporate world? Or, to put the question in reverse: do you need an MBA to be a successful manager, business leader, or entrepreneur?

There’s no denying the fact that there are successful business leaders who hold MBAs here and around the world , but you also have numerous examples of people who don’t (Bill Gates, Narayan Murthy, and Steve Jobs to name three) who have gone on to lead successful companies.

An MBA program teaches you to be able to assess, predict and mitigate risk and to some extent adds knowledge and understanding of the corporate world. And for companies, it carries what economists call a “signalling” value of quality – which begs the question as to why they would think someone with a background, say in the humanities, has not gone through rigorous training.

But what about “soft” skills, such as being able to successfully lead teams, thinking creatively, to say nothing of people and networking skills and big picture thinking, all of which are undeniably essential for success in the private sector but not necessarily all acquired from an MBA program? You could argue these skills are as well or better developed working as part of a scientific research team or playing in a symphony orchestra for that matter.

And what about experience? The average work experience required to enter a typical MBA program in India seems to be below the average in the west. There seem to be signs that this is changing (ISB for example) but we still have some ways to go in ensuring that admissions are stricter on the work experience criteria since real education and knowledge come from lessons learned from ones’ own experiences and from those of others.

Best practice in a company, surely, rests on being able to learn from one’s mistakes, failures, and success, as much as it does on risk analysis. An MBA without real business and life experience does not amount to very much, whether in the corporate world or any other world.

In India, the overwhelming majority of students enrolled in MBA programs are from backgrounds in engineering and natural sciences (the common admissions tests often favor these individuals given their very technical and quantitative focus). By sharp contrast, in the American model, at least at the most elite institutions, entry into an MBA program does not rest on being a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Caltech, and puts much weight on real life experience and a diversity of backgrounds.

The thinking at top-tier B-schools in the U.S. is that you could have studied anything from art history to zoology or anything in between, as long as you have an interesting background and show promise of being a leader. I personally know successful investment bankers with backgrounds in music and English literature.

Grades and standardized test scores are important, but are not the only thing, in leading to a well balanced cohort of incoming students at the top schools. The bottom line is: are you able to think creatively and critically, and will you be able to lead? And this thinking is pervasive not just in getting admission to an MBA program but it also mirrors hiring practices at top firms. The success of the system is self-evident, and the U.S. has, by any measure, the most dynamic corporate culture in the world.

Maybe it’s high time we learned some lessons from this example. We can’t change our MBA programs overnight but at least HR managers at the top firms should begin to think a little more creatively and strategically themselves. The benefits for the quality of our corporate culture and the country as a whole could be huge.

– Rupa Subramanya Dehejia is a Mumbai-based economist; she has previously lived and worked in Delhi, the Middle East and Canada. India Journal is a regular feature by external contributors.