MBA Grad or School Dropout?

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1264102.cms
Without getting into the merits of this article and getting trapped in generalizations, this certainly qualifies as a story-of-the-week, especially as the PGP cattle-fair auction (aka placement season) is drawing near.

PTI[ SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2005 11:38:47 AM]NRI Special Offer!NEW DELHI: Salaries drawn by sweepers, attendants, drivers and helpers working at power giant NTPC can arouse strong envy among students from IIMs and IITs as the packages offered to school dropouts comes very close to what top MNCs might offer B-school graduates.
Lal Beni, who perhaps never went to school and works as a sweeper in National Thermal Power Corporation, draws an annual package of Rs 8,68,146. One Safal Ram working as a helper in the company enjoys a handsome package of Rs 8,98,369 per annum, according to the annual report of the Corporation. List does not end here. Raghu Nath Sharma, a school dropout (quit studies after 4th std), enjoys a remuneration of over Rs 6.5 lakh per annum. Prem Singh, could not continue studies after 6th standard, brings home Rs 7,89,821, which is well enough to embarrass a highly educated person. Satbir Singh, a driver who discontinued studies after 8th standard, earns Rs 9,18,941 per annum which is few thousands less than R D Kapoor, Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) and holds an MBA degree, and serves as Director in the same company and takes home Rs 10,62383, the report says. After having struggled to acquire MSc and PhD degrees, one D N Roy, Deputy General Manager in the company, could only manage half the salary (Rs 5,21,903) as that of Satbir.
A senior driver Rumal Singh earns Rs 5,67,447 which is few thousands more than that of Roy's. Thirty six years of experience and BSc (Engineering) degree could fetch only Rs 8,79,658 per annum for one S S Chakraborty, who serves as Chief Executive Officer in one of the units under the company, the report says.
The remuneration offered by the PSU includes salary, allowances, leave encashment, leave travel concession, payment for subsidised leased accommodation, reimbursement of medical expenses to employees and employer's contribution to Provident Fund and other funds.
However, it does not include the monetary value of the medical treatment provided in the Company's dispensaries/hospital of Project sites, since it cannot be quantified employee wise. In addition, the employees are entitled to gratuity/ group insurance in accordance with Company's Rules. The company also claims that none of the employees mentioned is related to any directors in the Public Sector Unit.

New elective process and its bizzareness

I absolutely fail to understand this so called "new elective process". The biggest problem that I have with this is it seems more complicated then our election process. Anyway the two step elective choice process seem absolutely bizzare because it just does not make sense.

The designers of this process might have tried this process so that they know the preference of people before they design the time-table but then if the preferences entered are the real ones then nobody needs two step process and if these are fake ones then the data is useless.

This whole problem could have been much easily solved by decided the list of electives couple of week earlier so that people have enough time in entering the elective choices and time table before the next quarter starts.

Anyway I am just happy that I don't have to go through with it but I can see trouble written all over it.

Electives for Q3

The tentative list of quarters being offered has just come out:

• Research for Marketing Decisions
• Creative Marketing Prof. YLR Moorthi
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – Strategy, Processes and Systems
• Negotiation Skills (from December 16)
• Corporate Tax Management
• Elements of Management Consulting
• Artificial Intelligence, Neural Nets and Applications
• Inter-Cultural Management
• Supply Chain Management (PGSEM Cap – 15)
• International Banking (PGP, PGSEM joint Cap – 60)

The ones in red are either new or are being offered after more than 2 years. I think the coming quarter is also the one that does not count for the PGP placements. If so, then expect to see almost every single PGP student sleep, read the newspaper, a novel, or SMS during every single lecture, for the joint courses. RMD was a 2 credit core course till the class of 2004, and we had it in Q4 of AY 2003 (that would be the fourt quarter of academic year 2003-04).

Compare this with what was offered last year for Q3 (AY 04).

• E-Business Models and Strategies
• Product Management
• Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks & Applications
• International Banking
• Personal & Interpersonal Effectiveness
• Management of Commercial Contracts
• Corporate Valuation
• Global Financial Markets
• Supply Chain Modeling and Analysis
• Telecommunication Industry: Technologies and Dynamincs
• Elements of Management Consulting

Life at IIMB, from a PGP's perspective

There are a fair number of blogs by IIMB PGP students also, of which most seem to stop after placement season, for some reason or the other. It's nice to hope that the PGSEM blog will continue even after graduation, if for no other reason that IIMB has absolutely no intentions whatsoever of ever even contemplating the possibility of offering anything close to placements for the PGSEM course. I will write a post on that separately, and what I learned from a former PGSEM Chairperson.

But this post is about the very eloquent description of an academic quarter by a gentleman named Nikhil Ramesh on his blog.

And I quote, verbatim...

"So it begins. The much talked about term 2. What's so significant about term 2 you ask ? Well, nothing much, except that it is a glimpse straight into hell, if my seniors are to be believed. And not one of those small peeps into hell where you just survey the scene for a few seconds and then decide whether you wanna vacation there or not, but it is a long sabatical, lasting for 3 months, where you will get to dance with the devil on a daily basis.Whats in term 2 that is making me dread it so you wanna know. Well read on.
Acads :Nothing much, just 4 extremely miserable subjects. Operations Management where the devil pulls down your pants, Marketing where he proceeds to make you remove your underwear, Quantitative Techniques where he clasps your .... ahem ahem......"jewels" in his scaly palms, and finally Corporate Finance where he will administer the coup de grace and squeeze the living daylights outta your manhood and ensure that he leaves you impotent. Oh, I forgot to mention, there are 2 more subjects, ManComm-II and some HR course, just to ensure that you dont have any spare time at hand to nurse your wounds."

The PGSM blog and search results

If you search for 'IIMB PGSEM' this blog does pretty well...
On Google it is the second result, after the IIMB PGSEM page (out of a total of 145 hits)
On Yahoo it is hit number three.
MSN actually places it first, even before the official IIMB PGSEM page!