--By Upashana Neupane

 

Nepali business schools are possibly giving their best to their students in terms of academics.  But they lag behind when it comes to providing practical skills. The lack comes to the fore when even students with higher grades find it hard to face real life work challenges. Experts attribute this to the weak linkages between the B-schools and the businesses.  Increasing enthusiasm in students to be entrepreneurs or managers in various fields, has led to a surge in the number of B-schools across the country. However, only some of the existing B-schools in Nepal are putting efforts to develop linkages between education and real time business needs. 

 

Overall Academic View

Awarded as the nation’s top business school by NewBiz last year, Kathmandu University School of Management (KUSOM) is regarded as one of the exceptions in the above conclusion.  While this college has been investing resources in creating bond between the theory and practical aspect of education it provides, it also has a curriculum development board chaired by its Dean with representation from various business houses. This board provides inputs for designing curricula and policies that are relevant to the present market needs.  “We consider their recommendations in developing our curricula and policies. This helps in fulfilling the purpose of making business education relevant to present business needs,” says Dean of KUSOM Dr. Subas KC. He opines that, as business houses are the one who ultimately benefit from business education, they should work together and more closely with the business schools and vice versa. 

 

 

Another reason for its education being more practical is that KUSOM seeks constant updates from its alumni. Its alumni association has around 1300 MBA graduates as members. Most of them work in various corporate houses or organisations within the country. “Our alumni keep us updated about market expectations on the skills and competencies that we should ensure our management students have,” KC shares, “We consider their feedback while updating our curricula, syllabus, methodology, and pedagogy.” 

 

As part of its effort to keep the syllabus up to date, KUSOM makes comprehensive review of its academic programmes every three to five years.  It restructured its MBA programme last year. “Programmes are reviewed on the basis of the feedbacks from market,” KC informed.

 

Likewise, Tribhuvan University’s (TU) Faculty of Management also follows such practice in developing and updating its curriculum.  Prof. Dev Raj Adhikari, Dean at the TU’s Faculty of Management, shares that there is representation from business community in curriculum designing process of the Faculty. After holding multiple rounds of participatory discussions and reviews with different groups of stakeholders, the courses are finalized by the University.

 

While conceding to the need of making academic courses more responsive to market needs, Adhikari believes that the curriculum cannot be made entirely practical-oriented as that can be done only in job-specific trainings, not in academic courses. So, according to Adhikari, the business school has to produce generalists. “We cannot produce graduates specifically for one sector. We provide our students general knowledge and overall concept about business, which they can modify to suit the respective businesses that they later engage themselves” Adhikari opined. KC also agrees with this view. 

 

Internships and Placement

However, almost all the B-Schools have arrangement to provide students real-time work experience. For this, they have provisions of a minimum of 4 weeks internships. To assist in securing internship opportunities, and sometimes even jobs, at good business houses, some colleges have set up internship placement cells. “The placement cell continuously interacts with the business community and tries to match our graduate’s skills with needs of the business firm concerned,”KC said. In this connection, KUSOM has also signed MoU with around a dozen corporate houses that include Surya Nepal, Standard Chartered Bank, Buddha Air, Nepal Bank Limited, Unilever Nepal and so on.

 

The British College (TBC) too claims to be imparting balanced education to its students. Dipankar Sherpa, Programme Leader at the College, claimed that the college grooms students that are equipped with theoretical knowledge as well as practical skills required for managing business in real time. “We believe that practical skills must be focused more as they are core things one needs in the future,” Sherpa said while elaborating on the college’s stress on offering practical managerial and business skills to its students.TBC, which offers a reputed British Degree, also has placement cell to assist its student in securing internship at good business houses. It has signed MoU with Nepal’s big business houses like the Chaudhary Group and Khetan Group to facilitate internships for its student in their organization. 

 

Even those colleges that have no separate cell or department for internship or job placement claim that they too help students to get such placements. Prakash Singh Pradhan, chief of Shanker Dev Campus (a constituent campus of TU) shares that the goodwill of college also helps students find a proper organisation for employment or for internship. According to him, the campus facilitates students for internships if any of them find difficulty in getting one. Similar is the practice of Prime College. According to Naresh Prasad Shrestha, co-ordinator at Prime College, even though the college doesn’t have a dedicated placement cell it has been recommending students to different organisations. “Most of the time, software companies ask for our graduates. We choose the suitable candidate and recommend them for the job,” Shrestha said.  Prime is renowned for its IT programmes and its eight batches of students are performing well in the market. 

 

In the internship offers, the scenario is better with Hotel Management and Tourism colleges in Nepal. They are getting invitation to send their students for internship in various national and international hotels. Ujjwal Satyal, Faculty head at the National Academy for Tourism and Hotel Management (NATHM) says that Nepal has huge potential for being an education hub for hotel and tourism management studies. Affiliated to TU, NATHM offers a blend of practical and theoretical courses with mandatory internship provision of eight weeks and focuses on market needs, claims Satyal. The college has been able to secure internships for its students in acclaimed Nepali, Malaysian and Indian hotels. Satyal informed that the college is presently working to secure internships for its students in Dubai as well while also looking forward to launch its own four star hotel by 2015.

 

Apart from that, NATHM’s links with International College for Hotel Management (ICHM), a renowned Australian hotel management college, International Accreditation Organisation (IAO), International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IHRA) and with various hotel management schools across the world help it provide better practical exposure to its students. 

 

Co-Curricular Activities

In order to provide their students exposure to real life managerial skills, B-schools organise various co-curricular activities as well. Prime College has recently made it mandatory for its Bachelors in Information Management (BIM) students to prepare case studies. However, as Shrestha puts, the business houses have not been enthusiastically helping in this. Apart from that the college has been organizing ICT Meet Up since 2012. This event is totally managed by the students though college provides some background support, Shrestha informed. The college also has ‘Entrepreneurial Management Club’. Similarly, KUSOM organises KUSOM Annual Festival (KAF) every year with an objective to provide platform and learning opportunity of the real world to its students. “Students take overall responsibilities from collecting funds to supervising and executing the event,” he said. Apart from this, KUSOM also organises events like KUSOM Annual Co-Curricular Activities (KACE), Eco-Carnival and job fair event in active participation of the institution’s placement cell, among others. 

 

B-Schools also invite business personalities to the schools for sharing their real time business problems and insights with students. Recently the trend of taking students on industrial tour is also increasing.

 

 

Bridging the Gap

Despite initiatives of some colleges to make management studies more realistic, relationship between B-Schools and Business Houses is not as close as it should be. KC concedes to this saying that the bond between them is very weak in comparison to other Asian countries. He adds: “Nepali business community always has been a consumer and wants to consume only. They only absorb our graduates but are not willing to invest in them.” Elaborating further, KC says that it’s hard to reach out business community and that the community has also never been interested in colleges or the students.

 

 “Ultimately it’s the business community who absorbs the graduates or needs them. So, the business community should participate in the process of producing these graduates.”He further adds that in order to become consumer of good management professionals, Nepali business community should also invest in the making of such professionals. They should invest not only in terms of money but in terms of time, energy and feedback as well. Without investing, it’s morally wrong to expect the graduates to be the way they want.”

 

According to KC, the apex body of business organisations should establish a unit to coordinate their requirements with the university or the B-Schools. “That way it’ll be helpful to maintain close rapport with the business schools and help develop strong linkages. If Business community stays aloof, then we cannot provide the kinds of graduates they need,” he adds. 

 

On the other hand, Pradhan believes that the Shanker Dev or other government colleges are crowded with students making it difficult for the education to be interactive and practical. While believing that the curriculum of the TU should be updated and revised regularly, he claims that TU has been victim of irresponsible politics, which he thinks has affected the university and the student’s performance.  As the way ahead, he stresses on the need to practice interactive and students-centred teaching methodologies and adoption of new technologies. He calls for taking education policy seriously and says, “The curriculum should be globalised as the competition in the market is now so steep unlike in previous days.”

 

Satyal, who is into making NATHM as a hub for Hotel Management studies, stresses that Nepali colleges should upgrade their standards and refine their curriculum to meet the demands of the market.