Recently, professor Raj S Dhankar recently took over as the dean of Delhi University?s Faculty of Management Studies (FMS). In an interview with FE?s Kirtika Suneja, he shares his vision for the faculty, students and his expectations from the industry. Excerpts:
What are your priorities as the new dean of FMS?
FMS has now evolved as a big management school and to manage it professionally has become a challenge. The fourfold increase in student strength from 1990 to 2011 needs an increase in the faculty base and, hence, we are moving to a new facility in south campus. My priority is to move to that residential campus and then attract new talent to increase the faculty strength from the current 32 to 65. This will help us build a different brand of FMS with new infrastructural facilities.
With faculty being a focus area, how do you plan to improve its quality?
Faculty members in most B-schools are not trained management experts and this is a dichotomy. They don?t have hands-on experience in the industry. So, a close interface with the industry is required that will help students get a judicious mix of theory and practice. My concern is quality faculty who are good in research and have industry exposure. This is why we send our faculty for training programmes to different B-schools across the world.
Do you plan to add more programmes?
We need to move with market requirements in this world of global business scenario. We are thinking of restructuring our evening three-year programme and reduce its duration to two years. The content of the programme will have more issues related to international business. Though, in principle, we have agreed to the programme, we are yet to decide the repackaged form.
Management education has become synonymous with MNC placements and gateway to high salaries. How do you plan to change this?
B-schools produce analysts and not problem-solvers or global thinkers. Students are taught how to make money and not how to become great leaders. We are reorienting the teaching pedagogy to focus on thought process and focus on creating graduates who can become change agents for the society.
What about collaborating with foreign universities?
Nothing is on the cards as of now, because the timing of our programmes is different from that of foreign institutes, and they have a system of credit transfers while we don?t. We have only a limited number of exchange programmes and MoUs, that too for only the faculty.