For the past decade India has been in the grip of MBA fever. whatever the discipline chosen by a student, it had to be topped by a MBA degree. Irrespective of your field and knowledge, it has begun to be considered that without that coveted degree you are not employable. It has spiralled a trend, which does not seem to have abated.
I have long suspected that our education system undermines knowledge and aims at mediocrity, this trend has amply substantiated this theory. Instead of encouraging the youth to pursue excellence and specialisation, we have dangled the MBA carrot.
We ought to have encouraging engineers to create, scientists to discover and academicians to form new theories, instead, we have been dissuading them to delve deeper into chosen fields. We have diverted them towards this inane degree which at best is ‘common sense’ camofloufed by technical jargon.
There’s a mad rush to get into top management institutes as the lure of lucre has overpowered all other considerations. We are collectively to blame for this. The industries are the biggest culprits who make a beeline for these institutes. The mass churned out fools are in a mould with very rudimentary knowledge of their subject.
They are armed to their teeth with arrogance which only an empty degree could generate, bereft of specialisation, they flood the job market driving out the truly deserving ones.
The students who passionately follow their chosen field and achieve excellence are seldom valued for their knowledge or offered plump jobs. Pupils doing Masters in Arts or Science are the potential inventors and philosophers, but are relegated to backwaters owing to the mediocre mindset of our industries.
This generic way of treating all disciplines, and putting them in the same mould bespoke of a mindless system which will soon boomerang when we will be flooded by jack of all trades, incapable of actually doing anything. They are only trained in making power point presentations sans any true power and camouflaging their scant knowledge with technical jargon.
I’m reminded of Ayn Rand. whose philosophy ridiculed such parasites. We are hurtling towards a society where identically sounding and dressed youth will go around blowing their trumpet and only work smart, never hard.
It’s time we valued depth of knowledge and respected people in pure academics and put their knowhow to good use. We need to trigger this trend, specially in fields like sciences and Psychology, as they have the immense capacity to help mankind.
I think we will come full circle, regress and then move forward. I hope our shortsightedness doesn’t cause irreparable damage to the growth of our country.
meera unplugged
meerabhardwaj28 