Hyderabad: Management colleges in Telangana — half of which are located in and around Hyderabad — are watering down their Masters in Business Administration (MBA) course.

MBA, which is expe-cted to prepare students for taking up managerial roles in companies, has become just another course churning out thousands of unemployable post graduates. Every year, more than 20,000 students pursue MBA across nearly 300 colleges in Telangana.

While the list of colleges granted affiliation by universities for conducting MBA course is yet to be out this year, there were 123 MBA colleges in Hyderabad and its suburbs last year affiliated to Osmania University, offering 14,500 seats.

There is good demand for the course as 24,593 out of the 28,496 seats under convener quota were filled through ICET last year. ICET is conducted for admissions into MBA and MCA.

However, one of the indicators of poor quality of MBA colleges in Telangana is the rankings for top 50 colleges released this year by the ministry of HRD. Only one college from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh was on its list, whereas neighbouring states had two or three colleges. Tamil Nadu had nine colleges.

Students revealed that placement cells, a basic requirement in a college for professional courses like MBA, are non-existent and not surprisingly, on-campus placements are almost unheard of. In some colleges where placements do take place, most jobs on offer are low profile ones like salesmen of consumer goods.

Sandeep Jadhav, student of a private MBA college, said, “I did not join a private MBA college with high expectations on placements. However, I hoped that I would get some assistance in approaching companies for jobs, industrial interactions at college. But nothing of these was offered.”

Prof. Vedulla Shekhar, principal, College of Commerce and Business Management, Osmania University said, “The fault lies on part of students also. Many who apply for MBA do not work hard but hold expectations that just doing the course will automatically fetch them a good job.”

No quality checks on MBA colleges
While the government had cracked down on engineering colleges for failing on standards, MBA colleges have got a free run from all.

Though Osmania University had reduced the number of seats in some MBA colleges last year, it did not cancel the affiliation of any college. MBA colleges are plagued by the shortage of faculty members with industrial work experience, poor and namesake libraries, fake projects bought from areas like Ameerpet or Kukatpally.

According to well- known academician Prof G. Haragopal said, “Existence of MBA colleges in hundreds is itself a proof of how recklessly universities have allowed the expansion of management education institutions in the state. Well-educated and talented MBA students get high paying corporate jobs and a very few of them take up teaching. If there are hundreds of MBA colleges mushrooming across the state, where did all of them get good quality teachers from? There should be strict implementation of AICTE guidelines.”

However, private MBA colleges blame the falling standards of management education to low fees. When contacted, the principal of a private MBA college said, “Fees for a convener quota MBA seat is Rs 27,000, and Rs 40,000 for self-financed courses. So how are we supposed to match top B-schools in the quality of education, infrastructure or teachers as offered by top B-schools? MBA fees need to rise at least 1.5 times.”