Importance of bespoke education in a management classroom

Flexibility to personalize has been the key in delivering everything today, whether it is products or services. While the education has remained straightjacketed to rigid structures developed decades ago with the industrialisation age, education should be flexible to take aspirations and interests into account.

While several foreign universities have followed this principle for an under-graduation stream (and some of the new universities in India as well), it is hard to find an example in the post-graduation system for the same.Students have always given feedback to this effect but there has been no change in the system, resulting in poor interest in learning.

While corporate involvement has been limited to guest lectures, there has been negligible impact on course curriculum from their inputs leading to alienation and regular accusations that the course curriculum has not kept up with the times.Bespoke education provides the student with the opportunity to decide his career goals,

choose the learning path that he wants to opt for and pedagogy empowers students to create their own learning path and career goals for fulfilling their aspirations, thereby creating a better fit for their preferred industry as compared to other ‘Generic Management Programmes’ that are rigid and inflexible in their approach.

Based on this philosophy when such a curricula is to be developed, the main stakeholders to a mamagement programme- the corporate experts need to be broguth in and deliberations need to be done with experts from the academia. It is about developing what the industyr needs and offer that in a way that graduates are more equipped to deliver on the job from day one.

This enhances the employability of the graduates as it is all about a focussed, spefcific approach to learning and career building. IFIM is the only institution with a completely flexible PGDM program structure that has been very well appreciated by the corporates as they in turn get highly focused resources.

The students graduating from IFIM are focussed and certain about what career path they want to pursue. There are examples where students have turned down hefty salaries for a job profile that is closer to their heart. As it is evident it is contrary to the general trend of higher packages being a bigger pull for the students.

Another aspect that bespoke model delivers is a more concentrated set of inputs that are a unique blend of knowledge, skills and attitude. Knowledge by far any programme can deliver, however, skills and attitude must be built and that is what the bespoke programme does as it focusses equally on building skills and attitude.

e future lies with institutions who can deliver such flexibility and customisation and shift the onus of what to learn and when to learn on to the students. They become the owners of their career in the right earnest.

(The writer is Director, IFIM Business School, Bangalore)

By Abhishek Nirjar