MBA is dead for sure.
Is PhD becoming important
How do you recruit future leaders
I have never been a great fan of MBAs. But my experience with PhDs hasn’t been great either. But of late I am coming to the view that a PhD is a much better degree to have than a MBA. Both Israel and China have put their army of PhDs to great use. And nearer home, it is unlikely the MegaFund will even look at your pitch deck unless to have a couple of PhDs, research papers in top end peer reviewed journals and some seriously monetisable patents. When I visit corporates, I find the PhDs being treated with renewed respect.
Innovation is key to the future of any corporate. And PhDs are probably better suited to any serious innovation than any MBA ever will. Now mainstream media is echoing the same:
Forty years ago, we were all unkind to the PhDs. One of our Distinguished Fellows from the IIT cloud made it into a joke on herself – BTech is the product, MTech is the by product and PhD is the waste product. Couldn’t have been more cruel. Or more right.
In 2001, I was in Israel reviewing the startup ecosystem that was beginning to emerge in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. Thousands of Russian Jews had arrived from Russia. There were hundreds and hundreds of PhDs. Herzilya was buzzing with activity. Cafés had become startup offices. Universities were increasing PhD intake by an order of magnitude.
Closer home in IIT Bombay – many years ago Prof Nag, the then Director had figured out that the only way IIT Bombay could get ahead of the other IITs was to increase the intake of PhD students. But there were no applicants. He put in place a very liberal policy. Sponsored PhD candidates don’t have to give any exams. They were directly recruited. This sounded cool. There were no scholarships though. I thought of enrolling for a PhD myself. However I would first have to do a MTech and that didn’t sound like a very good idea. I made a request for a direct PhD admission which was turned down.
Thirty years later, our Prime Minister got it immediately. UGC came up with a law which allows BTechs to directly enrol for a PhD if they have a distinction. The law has been very welcome and many of my sixty year old batchmates have enrolled for a PhD now. I am still thinking.
However for all startups that we fund from the MegaFund – it is compulsory for all fresh engineers to enrol for a PhD. We don’t care where and in what subject. They get a salary from the startup and employment is terminated if progress on the PhD front is not satisfactory. The experiment has been hugely successful and the IIT Alumni Council is now all set to offer international PhD programs in India through the IIT Alumni Research University. The coursework is online and the students have to travel abroad three months a year. President Trump has done wonders to our enquiries which have shot up 100x
MBA is dead.
PhD is the new degree for a premium job