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When Professor Mahendra Lama took charge as vice chancellor at the newly set-up Central University in Sikkim last year, he had visions of setting up a university that would achieve the heights of academic excellence.

Little did he know about the constraints that he would face. To start with, there were very few quality professionals willing to join the education sector. “To compete with the best universities abroad not only do we need to have competent teaching staff but also managers in core areas like administrative management, finance, academic and professional programmes, infrastructure development and mobilisation of resources,” says Lama.

While the problem of faculty crunch is often discussed, little attention has been paid to an equally important area: the lack of management bandwidth and the inability to offer a consistent quality of service by most educational institutes.

This lack of professional management could seriously hinder Indian higher education sector’s global image and growth prospects.

Challenge of Scarcity
To visualise the extent of the problem let’s look at the sectoral growth trends. The CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets’ “Indian Education Sector Outlook” reports: “As of July 2007, there were 1,617 recognised engineering colleges of which nearly 1,200 were private. The total number of colleges is expanding at a rate of about 100 per year…India has more than 300 private colleges offering MBAs and 140 private medical colleges, most operating as stand-alone institutions. A few chains have emerged such as Amity University with 38 colleges and Manipal University with 20 colleges.”

While it is difficult to estimate the number of management professionalsthat are needed by these institutions, the growth trends indicate that the number could be anywhere between 50,000 to 200,000. The engineering, management and medical institutes are the ones that have been hardest hit.

Says Bharat Gupta of Ernst & Young, “These institutes require well-developed systems, robust administration and strong leadership. Given the scale and complexity of these colleges, the need for professional managers is being felt acutely.”

Meeting this demand is proving to be a huge challenge. The greatest need is for managers and executives in the marketing, administration, logistics, finance, corporate relations and IT disciplines. Market positioning, building relationships with alumni, donors, students and society are some of the major marketing and communication challenges that could use professional help.

Cause and Effect
There are a number of barriers that Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) face in attracting the management talent. The most significant one is the ‘not-for-profit’ nature of the education sector. This limits the ability of institutes to offer remuneration packages that are on par with corporate salaries. Says Raghav Gupta, president, Technopak, “HEIs need to be set up and managed as for-profit institutions to ensure high quality of education and provide incentives for private players to participate proactively.”

Many believe that true professionalism and high standards of education will continue to elude Indian higher education, unless it becomes an organised industry. Until then, professional managers will continue to give the sector a wide berth. Once it has acquired an industry status, it will become more practical to develop education management as a discipline under the larger umbrella of management studies. This would then help in growing a pool of talented managers who would be trained to meet the unique needs of the education sector.

Yashpal Committee Report points out that there is a need “to encourage universities to start programmes in management of educational institutions. A separation between academic administration and overall management (including fund-raising) may be desirable.”

However, the lines between academic administration and overall management continue to be blurred as most institutions still deploy their academic faculty for administation. Many institutions have perhaps not even considered hiring professionals. But, the problem is that when faculty doubles up as administrators the focus shifts away from teaching and research.

By leaving administration to academics, these institutes run the risk of lowering their competitiveness in the global as well as domestic markets. Adds Shashi Gulhati, retired IIT Delhi professor, who is now an education consultant, “Seniority, experience and academic worth are thought to be sufficient to handle managerial functions as well. In most institutions once an individual is appointed to any administrative position, he or she occupies that post until retirement.”

Such a system does not allow for any learning of management skills or introduction of fresh ideas. To some extent, the IITs and IIMs have handled administration issues a little more innovatively. Says Gulhati, “IITs experimented with the rotation system and the academicians held administrative positions for a period of 3 to 5 years. Then the baton was passed on to someone else. This enabled a large number of faculty to get experience. Each person who came along added his or her own input and brought a new perspective to the job.” Despite this, such a practice can hardly be adequate in a competitive environment where Indian HEIs are being benchmarked against the top-notch institutes in the world.

The other barrier is that higher education sector does not offer a career path equivalent to that of corporate sector. “Most people in industry do not understand what the academic world is all about. Besides, a management job in the education sector isn’t very glamorous,” points out Ajit Rangnekar the dean of Indian School of Business (ISB). Rangnekar was earlier at PricewaterhouseCoopers and is one of the rare people who have crossed over. Those who do join the sector often find it difficult to return to industry jobs as their stint in education renders them out-dated or irrelevant.

Clearly, there is a case for making the education sector a more attractive option for youngsters who are pursuing a career in management. As Gautam Khungar, director of ISB says, “The big context needs to be made more visible to youngsters. There is a need to design and deliver products for these professionals keeping in mind their core competencies.”

Moreover, there are also differences in the way institutes and business entities are run. The processes needed for running business projects and those for successful management of an institute’s programmes are different. As Rangnekar says, “Getting industry people to be effective in the academic world is the challenge. It’s not so much about finding the right people from industry but getting them to adapt.”

The Way Forward
There is no doubt that investors see a huge potential in education. According to the CLSA Report, “there have been at least nine private-equity deals in education in the past 12 months, with total investment of more than US $90 million compared with three deals in the whole of 2006 and investment of US $17.5 million.”

However, as the competition in the sector increases, investors will start looking for professionally managed ventures that can deal with the challenges and complexities of the sector.

So far there has been no attempt to codify knowledge in management of educational institutes in India. Vineet Gupta of Jamboree Education, who is involved in setting up a university says, “The education environment in India is unique and we need not exactly go the western way of managing and running our educational institutes. Institutions can learn from each other and look for solutions to find competent management teams to set up and administer these institutes.”

Established institutions could also look at leveraging their alumni network to invite industry professionals to join in administrative roles. While the alumni of IITs and IIMs have been known to contribute funds for their alma mater, few institutes have leveraged their alumni to recruit professional managers.

However, while looking for professional help from the industry, HEIs have to look for a good match. Management skill sets have to be balanced with the unique requirements of academia.

As the industry-academia grows, it is likely to be a win-win situation for both. As Rangnekar puts it: “Being the Dean of a business school is not the same as being a CEO. It is more like the job of a conductor in a philharmonic orchestra; to ensure that all the musicians will play together and make great music.”

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