Breaking barriers with online MBA -By Kartik Vishwakarma from IIM Trichy

The journey of MBA 2020 started before 2018 for most aspirants as getting into their dream B-School is not a cakewalk. In all this while, some people landed admission offers from their dream colleges, some took a bet on another shot, some left the journey altogether and the most intelligent ones left everything and started making memes! 

For an average middle-class family, 3Is are like the holy trinity - ‘IIT, IIM and IAS’. Being a part of any of these brings huge joy to every family, as it provides financial security and a strong social status (also, a higher probability of getting married).

Well, jokes apart.2020 has shown us some of the most gruesome realities of this world which we ignored in the era of information overload. There were 20 IIMs before COVID-19 appeared and after August 2020, there are more than 10000 mini IIMs in India right now. Spread across the entire nation, every student studying online is a part of these institutes. Study rooms are playing the role of classrooms, hostels and mess combined. Parents have become the administrators of these mini-IIMs and as it turns out, they are pretty good at this! 

Is an online MBA worth it?

Every stakeholder was worried when online semesters were announced. Some were happy for their safety and for some, this was a dystopian nightmare straight out of the Black Mirror episode. But most importantly, a question that troubled everybody was this – Is an online MBA even worth it? (Spoiler! Answer is: Yes)

The foundation of this question lies in the fact that after spending nearly 2 million rupees, students have to sit in front of their laptops to watch online lectures just like free courses on the internet. It's definitely not the same as free online learning; MBA education is not like other courses, it is bound to remain different in its own way whether online or offline. For a regular MBA student, every day is rigorous and unpredictable. 

Online education might have diluted the quality in various domains but not much has changed for management students. Rigorous timetable and unpredictability are not the operating-core of MBA but are strong support-functions, which are strengthened by the online mode. For our batch, online MBA is good. That’s a polarising statement! And I have no intention of supporting it by facts like getting access to home-cooked food, etc. I am looking in the direction of the intangible benefit it is providing us by giving us a futuristic vision. 

It has shown us that a chasm between the mode of the current education system and future education, could be filled in a faster manner than we previously anticipated. Technological disruption in both education and work is inevitable. As history tells us, such disruptions are irreversible and being in the early stage of disruptions, helps future leaders predict the patterns of change that are coming and prepare accordingly. 

The pros and cons of online MBA

As a management student, whenever I am discussing a case, I am supposed to provide proper analysis along with the frameworks used. In the scope of this article, detailed analysis cannot be shown. So, I’ll iterate only those key takeaways which are more grounded in reality. The biggest strength of this situation is that the batches of 2021 and 2022 have become the first batches in history that took online classes in all totality and thus turned out to be warriors of their time, having learnt to withstand even the harshest of times. 

The biggest weakness on the other hand was adaptability by students, especially the ones who belong to financially and technologically weaker backgrounds. Even then, the adoption rate among such students has been fairly high due to the hyper-competitive space of management education. And that’s one of the most crucial aspects one must understand, penetration of technology is still not high enough to support online education but people are willing to come to this mode due to immense possibilities. This is the beginning of the era of technological advancement, the great levelling of the playing field between poor and rich students.

Online MBA has provided open opportunities to both students as well as B-Schools. Students got a hands-on-experience of futuristic education, which will help in shaping the vision of future leaders in the era of digital transformations. A leader who himself understands the benefits and downsides of working from home can help in shaping the company policies and operational structures to get the best out of the workforce.

But how did online MBA help B-Schools?

The answer is pretty straightforward – Removal of physical boundaries. The number of enrolled students in any college is determined by the availability of physical infrastructure which can accommodate a finite number of students who could be provided quality education without any compromise. Digital infrastructure will have no such restrictions. Many more students could be enrolled and provided with quality education. A lot of capable students could not make it to good colleges due to limited no of seats in IITs and IIMs. Digital transformation of our education will help more students get a seat in prestigious institutes and even study in colleges that might be in another part of the world.

Online MBA is a glimpse into the future where a large proportion of learning and work would be done remotely. For budding leaders who would make a difference in the future, this is the perfect time to start writing the first chapter of a new chronicle, a new India!