To a student of management, corporate
internship or summers as is popularly known is an unforgettable moment. The roots
can be traced to the early days of management teaching in the US and other
Western countries. When a course was introduced on Masters in Business
Administration or MBA in popular lingo, it was perceived to be course with
practical hands on knowledge to complement the theoretical aspects taught in
the class. In fact case study method of teaching, a derivative from the law
school, was developed and fostered to build better models and pedagogy to teach
the concepts of business decision making. A student would be taught basis foundation skill sets and concepts of business management in the first year. There
was to be time for reflection before the student moved on to the second year.
Instead of holidays between the first
and second year of course study, the business school culture developed the
concept of summer internship. The students were expected to land up an
internship in a corporate where they would use the concepts ingrained during
the first year of study to frame a solution for a corporate problem. It was a
big hit and ensured students would have some corporate exposure as they
graduated into the second year of study. As the tentacles of the business
school expanded globally, summers also became an integrated and perhaps
sacrosanct part of the curriculum.
In countries like India, students
would take up the MBA course immediately after graduation. In some countries like New Zealand, the
students were expected to have a mandatory work experience before opting for
MBA. Yet in the India, given the education timelines and culture, students
would perhaps have virtually zero corporate exposure as they took admission to
MBA course even in prestigious colleges. In such a scenario, summers became an
integral part of muddying the hands in the fields. In other words, students
should have a feel of corporate life before they graduated out of the course to
understand the dynamics of decision making better.
In the early days of management
education, very few colleges offered the course. The numbers of students too
would be restricted to around 60 and in few cases 120. Mostly apart from the
IIMs, it was the universities that offered MBA. Very few private colleges
affiliated to universities or otherwise offered the courses in business
administration. However, the scenario completely changed post liberalization in
1991.
In 1991, India opened up to the
private sector and saw a number of firms entering into the market. It was not
just domestic firms but multinationals too made a beeline into the Indian
market. The increase in the reach of the private sector also opened up the jobs
for the students of business studies. This led to opening up of new B-Schools
on a larger scale. To circumvent the barriers of the entry in University
system, many autonomous colleges emerged offering the course of Post Graduate
Diploma in Management. The summers remained an integral part of these courses. Yet
with the increase in the intake coupled with increase in the number of
colleges, the number of internship offerings began to shrink.
The students however as part of their course
outline had to undertake a couple of months of corporate internship. Given the
number of offerings being reduced, the quality of internships too began to deteriorate.
For many firms, having an intern meant
an extra burden If they have to be paid stipends. So paid internships slowly
disappeared from the horizon where they became an exception rather than the
norm. Further the increased competition meant firms have to constantly outperform
their peers in terms of market capture. They have to capture customers or reach
out to customers before their competitors did. Interns became a handy tool in
this exercise. Interns could be assigned marketing jobs. They would be asked to
get involved in lead generation, setting up sales meeting, handling the
customer relationship at counters or categories or at stores. They could set up
appointment through tele-calling for the team leaders to visit. The interns might
also be asked to visit clients and close the deals. The interns were more an
extra hand, often free who wanted a certificate to justify their stay in the
organization. So internship evolved into an exercise of marketing and sales and
in some cases routine management operations.
Some institutes modified the
internship into in-plant studies. This meant student interns would visit
organizations, meet people, talk and record the interactions in the form of a
report. However, the rapid expansion in B-Schools and intake in B-Schools meant
a steep downward trend in internship quality. It reduced from an exercise of
sales or operations to something of an extra hand in running errands. Given a
lock-in of two months and in some cases up to six months interns have little
option but to adjust to the life in the organization and perform tasks that
hardly required the application or even basic understanding of what they have
gone through in their first year of study. Further, the divergence between the
internship work and the demands of institute for the research report meant a
virtual fiction being created as research report. Thus what essentially was to
be an exposure and application of concepts learnt in the first years to
corporate problem became an exercise for going through the motions to both institute
and the student. Few B-Schools however maintained a hype over internship to
demonstrate seriousness yet hardly anything changed in practice.
As B-school completes around a century
of its active existence, decline of the summers is one tale that it could have
done without. The core activity and asset of internship programme has derailed
and under serious threat and needs radical re-haul if it has to regain its
sanctity for the hundreds of tier-II and tier-III B-Schools.
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