Competitive exams in India: Are we testing the right parameters?

Their focus is on skills that often have nothing to do with requirements of the actual roles on offer

- DEVINA MEHRA

As the adage goes, “Whatever gets measured gets managed.” This principle is evident in education, professional recruitment and performance evaluations worldwide. The metrics we prioritize influence how individuals prepare, perform, and are judged.

Every management consultant will tell you this. Ironically, management education is one area where we have never stopped to ask whether we are testing the right skills. The Common Admission Test (CAT) and similar entrance exams for management institutes test for two areas of competency: One, English vocabulary and comprehension. Two, solving arithmetic and logic problems. In both, the latter especially, the test is mostly of speed. At best, it is like an IQ test.

But is speed really the requirement? It is almost the last skill required in the field of management. I cannot think of a single business where the critical difference between success and failure is a gap of a few minutes in the speed of decision-making.

Business leadership demands strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, collaboration, calculated risk-taking, long-term vision and even street smartness. None of these has any correlation with the ability to solve arithmetic problems within a few seconds.

Possibly, that is why most successful entrepreneurs do not have formal management education. Those of another generation like Dhirubhai Ambani or Richard Branson never even completed college. Even contemporary entrepreneurs, from Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm to Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo, did not opt for management education.