Does MBA guarantee a quality employee?

The Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. MBA is an essential degree in the present day and has gained worldwide importance in terms of recruitment. Companies higher their employees on the basis of this degree which raises an alarming question i.e. How reliable is an MBA?

Most programs base admission on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), which signifies whether or not the applicant can handle the course of work, work experience, academic transcripts, essays, references or letters of recommendation and personal interviews. Schools are also interested in extracurricular activities, community service activities and how the student can improve the diversity and contribute to the student body as a whole.

Many programs allow students to specialize or concentrate in a particular area. Standard concentrations include accounting, corporate strategy, decision sciences, property management, economics, entrepreneurship, finance, general management, human resources, international business, marketing, information systems / information technology, telecommunication, organizational behavior, project management, operations management, supply chain management, and sustainable business.

Some time back a survey conducted by MBA students of a prestigious (Top 10) b-school among the MBA students and aspirants revealed that only 18.6 % respondents found the b-school ratings “ very -genuine” .In response to another question-on ranking surveys -46.7% respondents termed them as ‘cursory /poor’.

The MBA degree has become one of the most popular masters' degrees. As more universities started offering the degree, differences in the quality of schools, faculty, and course offerings became evident. Hence different students from different institutes have been catered with different needs thus there is no symmetry amongst them.

B-school ratings, based on hard facts attract criticism as the facts submitted by b-schools are not always verifiable or verified. Wherever such verification is done (to whatever extent) fudging has been unearthed in many cases raising doubts about the veracity of the data.

An employee can be regarded as a value asset to the company if he delivers his task perfectly, within the time limit and with consistency so that it leads to the augmentation of the company as a whole. B-schools do teach the students these factors. It depends on the students how he/she is able to put it into practice. For example if the MBA is in HR it will teach what are the different characteristics of a particular topic, what are the different steps to achieve your desired goals, etc, the student will be presenting his skills of training and different development methods through group or individual presentations, he might cater to different projects during his summer training and acquire an experience in the particular field. So when he/she actually works as an employee in a body, he knows how to satisfy his client because of his erudition during MBA.

On the other hand every company has a peculiar requirement. What one learns during his/her course maybe completely discrepant to what one has to do in his workplace. For such individuals it is cardinal that he puts his expertise into practice even if he is not well-equipped with differing idiosyncrasy. One may argue that an apprentice with a doctorate degree from a little known University, can not be rated higher than a counterpart with industry experience but no doctorate.

The scores that one acquires during his academic year sometimes only reflect his knowledge. There are students who have the ability to absorb the contents of the course like sponge but when it comes to materializing them, their work is futile. Thus companies sometimes prefer work experience along with MBA to confirm the employees efficiency.

To conclude the whole issue it can be said that MBA does provide a perspective to the students but how to implement them when they face practical situations can only be ascertained by testing their capabilities. The companies while hiring these students should test their competence by putting them into various situations and analyze the results. A mere degree does not declare a person fit for a task, it is his potency which does.

- "Human Resource"- A magazine for the discerning professional.