Bms Courses : Off To a Flying Start
- A Review By Mr. Sameer Sankhe
Recently I was invited to give a guest lecture at one of the
colleges in suburbs. Well, I won’t call it a lecture. It was more of a talk given by
a senior than a lecture given by professor.
One thing that struck me was that the course has potential to provide the industry with well-trained and young managers. They will be worthy, cost effective substitutes for MBAs for many mid and small cap companies.
Needless to say that the job opportunities provided by the course will be far better than the pure BSc or BCom degree. The syllabus of BMS course is same as that of full time master’s degree provided by the Mumbai University. The activities outside the classrooms, in such institutes, are much the same as management colleges. The interaction with the industry, achievement motivation, MBA-like approach, better awareness, much better business sense will make them a better person, professionals and better money earners than most of the Bachelors in the University.
Professional Attitude And Aspiration To Be The Best
The institute has done its homework and has prepared a 3-year game plan to produce quality management-students who will be ready to work as an MBA. The critical success factors to succeed in the field have been identified, the goals have been set and systems are at place to achieve those. There are about 6-7 committees. Every student is a member of at least one of the committees. All of them are set to achieve the goals set up during the game plan. For example, students are well aware of the fact that they lack in prior work experience. They are trying to make this up by devoting more time to interaction with the industry.
Dynamic Executive Head
Executive head of the institute plays important role in maintaining the cutting edge of the institute. Understanding the overall changes in trends in the industry, aligning the policies with that, give the best results from available resource and maximizing the resources is done beautifully in this institute. Principal G. B. Daryani himself is a live example and a role model for students. The computer lab, the study room and other infrastructure like conference hall are well designed and completed with minimum resources by him.
An MBA as A Course Coordinator
Ms. Anaita Dalal is MMS from Mumbai University. She makes a full use of her skills as a manager as a course coordinator. This will help students to save their time, have a well-managed schedule and have better professors. A good course co-ordinator is very important for successful functioning of the course. If not managed properly these things has potential to harm the effectiveness of the course. The faculty members play major role in deciding the quality of students coming out of the B-Schools. The course coordinator is doing a good job of getting suitable professionals from the industry to guide the students.
Working As MBA
Anand Menon who aspires to become next Bill Gates thinks that it is very essential that they treat themselves as MBA students. Because, he says, the companies will start recognizing us as MBAs only if we ourselves start doing it. Mrudu Atre has a very focused aim of coming here. She wants to become the best professional in the financial services sector. Akshay Kriplani wants to help his father in the family business. He finds this course more useful than any other course offered by Mumbai University at undergraduate level. The level of motivation, awareness and focus, all of them have, is quite rare at undergraduate level.
Aarti Agicha says that the projects, the presentations, the committees, guest lectures, industry visits, a web-site for college and most importantly the time pressure is all the same as an MBA course. Aarti has already started wondering how to manage her time and to give justice to all her assignments, studies and extra-curricular activities. The commitment to the course is impressive.
Adequate Infrastructure Support
Except for the library, the college has managed to create good infrastructural support for the management course. Jyotsana Bhatia says that they have an easy access to computers and the Internet. That mitigates, to some extent, the trouble of not having a well-developed library. Simi Mohindra and Priya Jagitiani feel that the every kind decisions, be it a decision of buying a new book or arranging an inter-college paper presentation seminar, are made very quickly. Anand says that he wanted to invite a particular person from industry for a guest lecture. The lead-time between the concept to reality was just 4 days.
And what’s more, all this at very early stage of their life as well. This will give them a huge advantage. It will be interesting to see if they can capitalise on this flying start. Industry will be well aware of this and will be eager to catch them young.