Is The B-School Campus Dead?

B-Schools could face an existential crisis as economy slows and education moves online

- SONAL KHETARPAL

A GROUP OF SECOND-YEAR MBA students from XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, persuaded Prof L. Gurunathan, Associate Professor in Human Resource Management, to postpone his course on compensation to the next semester. They did not want to attend the course from their star professor online. But since B-Schools are not opening anytime soon, the elective will now be offered online much to the students’ dismay. “We can’t postpone it anymore,” says Gurunathan.

B-Schools across India have been shut due to the pandemic since March. What is certain is that whenever they open, the campus as we knew it will no longer be the same. Says Ranjan Banerjee, Dean, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR): “The fundamentals of the B-School will continue to be relevant but certain things will get executed differently.”

The number of active B-Schools in India has been falling over the years — it has fallen 12 per cent from 3,450 in 2015/16 to 3,037 in 2019/20. The pandemic-led disruption, however, has had a brutal impact. During FY21, AICTE accepted 197 applications for closure of B-Schools against 59 in FY20. Placements, too, have been impacted. Across the 223 B-Schools common to the BT-MDRA listing in 2019 and 2020, placements fell from 86 per cent in 2019 to 81 per cent in 2020. Tuition fees in 2020 are 2.3 per cent lower compared to 2019 for the 223 schools.