Placement process needs to be reviewed

Updated on: Monday, October 26, 2009

There is more to management education than job placements. According to K Mamkoottam, new dean of Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi
University, students spend too much energy and time on the placement process. “The purpose of a B-school is to impart learning and not just to place a student. But come placement season and students’ attention is taken away from learning,” he said.

The entire placement process, according to him, is ‘rushed up.’ He further added: “Companies want to recruit the best, students want the best offers, and B-schools want the best placement figures. But is it possible to have a well thought-out recruitment in such a short span of two or three days? I think we need to reconsider the way campus placements are done. Corporates and B-schools should come together and review the campus placement process.”

The new dean who has taken over from J K Mitra a few days ago will make this a priority. “I would like to sit with corporates and analyse the placement process. As a professor I have been in charge of placements. The rushed placements just promote competition among B-schools, students and companies themselves. The best of students, sometimes, are left behind in this process,” he opined.
Apart from this, introduction of a new curriculum and an integrated campus for FMS are also on his agenda.

“FMS runs three courses from North Campus and two from South Campus. An integrated campus would give an opportunity to students of all the courses to interact with each other. Moreover, teachers keep shifting between the two campuses to take classes. It is a time-consuming process. Along with some other colleagues, we mooted the idea of an integrated campus which would give us more space and better infrastructure,” he added.

In reference to the new curriculum, he said it had been in the pipeline for quite some time.

Management curriculum needs to be updated with the latest developments. “With recession, many new topics have to be included in the curriculum. Therefore, we would soon try to finalise the details of a new curriculum. Along with the content we would review the assessment process as well. We also want to increase industry interface by inviting more guest lecturers from the industry

Timesofindia

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