Outcome Based Accreditation: Future of Sustainable Development in Management Education

Outcome Based Accreditation: Future of Sustainable Development in Management Education

Ms. Preeti Suryawanshi & Dr. Neeta V. Shah

Abstract

The rapid expansion in the number of management education institutions and their intake capacity has been unable to ensure the quality of education simultaneously. In the context of privatization of management education, with opening of campuses around the country by leading universities to borderless degrees in management education, accreditation has acquired a new dimension and has to be done at par with the other advanced countries. India too, is witnessing a phenomenal development in accreditation as host of accrediting agencies both national and international are approached by management institutions to ensure that the promises made by them, expectations of students and employers are met leading to quality assurance and hence sustainable development of management education This paper draws a comparison between the traditional Input-Output Model followed by the accreditation bodies vis-à-vis a Outcome Based Accreditation (OBA) programme followed by most international accreditation agencies for continuous improvement of the Business Schools. The paper particularly studies the cases of a business schools enrolled for accreditation under the OBA program of National Board of Accreditation (NBA).The Study reveals that the OBA model is a „Learner Centric‟, rather than the traditional „Teacher Centric‟ model. It also examines the fallacies, challenges and pitfalls in the implementation of Outcome based accreditation.

Keywords: Business Schools, Management Education, Outcome Based Accreditation, Sustainable development, Continuous improvement

INTRODUCTION

Today the world economy is experience unprecedented change. New developments in management, science, media revolution and internationalization of education and the ever expanding competitive environment are revolutionizing the education scene. A paradigm shift has been noticed in higher education now a days, from „National education„ to „Global education', fr;2om „One time education for a few' to „lifelong education for all', from „teacher- centric education' to „learner centric education' (Venkatasubramanian, 2002). The Indian higher education system has a new role and a challenge to provide to the nation and the world at large, skilled human power at all levels, having breadth of knowledge and confidence to effectively confront the social and economic realities.

Management education too, has witnessed a massive expansion, the number of B-schools in India has tripled to about 4,500 amounting to as many as 3,60,000 MBA seats, collectively. There has been a remarkable focus and success on building capacity in management education in India. Having trained business graduates fulfills a big need given the pace of growth experienced by industry post liberalization. The industry today looks for trained manpower in sales, marketing, HR and finance roles in large numbers. Formal training of employees in basic business frameworks and concepts is a key success ingredient in the not-so-mature Indian industry. The rapid growth of management education in India in the last two decades is primarily due to two reasons; large gap in demand & supply and steep growth in economy.Over the years, to reduce the demand supply gap, a number of institutes began to offer various types of management courses. There are presently six types of management education organizations. These are:

1 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) set up by the Government of India 2 University/IIT departments of management studies

3 Colleges (government or private) affiliated to universities

4 Private or government institutes approved by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) 5 Private colleges or institutes not affiliated to any universities nor approved by AICTE.

6 Private colleges or institutes offering MBA courses in India in collaboration with foreign universities, where degree/diploma/certificate is awarded by the foreign university.

Fig.1.Source: report of the working group on management education

The regulation, growth and development of the above mentioned management education entities are under the scope of various organizations that have evolved over a period of time to serve the purpose. These organizations constitute the management education system in India.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development has two departments: the Department of School Education and Literacy, which deals with primary and secondary education, adult education and literacy, and the Department of Higher Education, which deals with university education, technical education, scholarship etc. The later department works for the planned development of higher education including management education through autonomous bodies like University Grants Commission (UGC) for coordination and maintenance of university education in the country and a separate body for technical education, i.e. All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) was set-up in November 1945 to conduct survey on facilities of technical education and to promote development of these in the country.

Under the AICTE, there is a separate Board of Management Studies that advices the Executive Committee of the Council on the academic matters falling in its area including norms, standards, model curricula, model facilities and structure of courses related to management education (AICTE Act 1987). The purpose of accreditation of technical programs in India is served by National Board of Accreditation (NBA) set up by the AICTE 1994. The accreditation process is based on eight broad criteria, which the institutes seeking accreditation of their program are expected to satisfy individually.

Apart from these bodies there are autonomous bodies like All India Management Association (AIMA), Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI) IIMs and IITs etc who also look into planning and development of technical education in India. Despite glorifying statistics on number Indian management education and such apex bodies in place to take care of their growth and development, the Indian management education sector is facing serious problems. The „National Employability Report: MBA Graduates 2012‟ by Aspiring Minds revealed that employability for management students ranges between 10– 20% for roles involving client interaction and it remains below 10% for any functional role in the field of HR, Marketing or Finance. This report further indicates low; employability in certain profiles. Also, India figure as the top contributors in sending students to USA, UK and Australia for higher education putting a question mark on the quality of higher education system in India. In the last five years, the demand for management programmes has begun to deflate now, as economy growth rate hit its slowest in the last nine years and the quality of education provided by B-schools has came under the radar. It is important thus to find out whether the quality of education has kept pace with the phenomenal jump in quantity. Do our management graduates have the skills which are required to be employable in the industry?

SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

With Public and Private, University and Autonomous all offering Management education there was tremendous growth of management education till year 2009 however in last few years, as seen in the figure the business schools, growth declined from 33% in 2008-09 to 3% 2012-13. In terms of absolute numbers, the number of new B-schools declined from 417 in 2009-10 to 82 in 2012-13.

Fig.2. Source: AICTE

This decline is a combination of two primary factors--weak regulatory mechanisms and profit motives of some private players. During the years of high growth in engineering and management institutions corruption in regulatory authorities was also riding high and many institutions were approved by overlooking qualitative deficiencies. At the same time, many private players were rushing into education "business" as a low-risk, high cash-flow business with an opportunity to leverage on real-estate and tax-free status of pseudo-non-profits. This opened the floodgates of many private institutions which compromised quality to save money on soft and hard infrastructure. And, hence students graduating from these institutions were unemployable which in turn created negative word of mouth for institutions to get future student enrollment. Given that private institutions rely solely on tuition for revenue, lack of enrollment means financial instability. As a result, a large number of engineering and management institutions are now facing problems of vacant seats and are even available for sale. This in turn has slowed the growth of new institutions (Chaudaha 2013)

In addition to this, the issue of sustainability has gained importance not only for companies and society, but also becoming rousingly important for business schools too due to awareness of its three pillars: profits (economic), people (ethics) and planet (environment). The business schools have over a period of time acquired a key role for promoting sustainable development by training managers and leaders to be respectful of ethics and environment. In that sense, business schools are important players in society regarding sustainability stakes. In addition, bodies granting accreditation labels to business schools tend to look more and more at criteria linked to ethics as part of the schools' quality. For instance, the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) accreditation integrates a criteria called “contribution to the community” to take business schools' positive externalities into account. However, the notion of sustainability has often been discussed regarding – and reduced to – either the environment or the notion of competitive advantage. Hence, there is a need for more research on sustainability in relation to other strategic issues. In particular, the sustainability of quality improvement for business schools needs further investigation. (Christophe L, and Strasbourg E M 2011)

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) in its paper on “B-schools and Engineering colleges shut down- Big Business Struggles" reveals that since 2009, the recruitments at the campus have gone down by 40% in the year of 2012 as a result the B-schools and engineering colleges are not able to attract students, more than 180 B-schools have already closed down in 2012 in the major cities Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahemdabad, Kolkata, Luknow, Dehradun etc. Another 160 are struggling for their survivals.

Barring graduates from IIM‟s, the B-schools are losing fast shine of attracting corporate India Inc. for campus recruitment and are increasingly facing their survivals, only 10% of the graduates are actually employable despite the robust demand for MBAs, adds the ASSOCHAM paper. This brings forth some serious symptoms of non sustainability in the Indian management education system.

The symptoms of non-sustainability in Indian Management Education are:

Large number of vacant seats across all sectoral business management courses Non employability of Indian management graduate to the level where they should be.

High student mobility to countries like United Kingdom (UK), Europe, United states of America(USA) for management education.

This reflects the lack of confidence of two very important stakeholders in higher education system; the Students showing lack of confidence in the quality of Education and the recruiters showing lack of confidence in the graduating students. Quality assurance of the institutes and its programmes has thus gained prime importance in the current highly competitive education system.

QUALITY OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

In past few years, the increasing number of new management institutions all over the country to meet the increased demand from the management aspirants has led the financially motivated entrepreneurs to enter the field of education and open up new B-schools. In addition, such colleges have been successful in receiving random approvals from the accreditation bodies and have resulted in a situation, which points towards the absence of a consistent methodology to ensure institutional accountability. Such a situation has resulted in sub-optimal quality of management education offered by these colleges. Besides, little importance to faculty quality and placements is another factor that has led to lowered educational quality. Such colleges need to develop a regulatory environment to maintain the balance of autonomy and accountability. Quality assurance for higher education programmes has therefore assumed top priority as it is expected to create students with industry relevant skills, a broad knowledge base and a set of competencies that are required to enter the complex and interdependent world (Altbach et al., 2009). Quality is a multidimensional concept, the definition of which is constantly changing. Apart from the national level regulatory bodies, many private and public associations are involved in accrediting institutions of higher education to ensure quality. The increasing number of accrediting bodies and their ever changing standards (requirements) bear testimony to the fact that quality assurance is of paramount importance to educational institutions. In addition to the several other requirements of accrediting bodies, assessment of learning outcomes has evolved as a major challenge to many institutions. The effectiveness of the teaching learning process is made evident through the assessment process and results. A well planned and executed assessment process aids to obtain information on the effectiveness of the learning environment and to diagnose strengths and weaknesses leading to remedial action (Atkins et al, 1993).

This observed trend has brought an opportunity to accreditation agencies for assurance of quality in education in various domains and help education institutions achieve excellence.

ROLE OF ACCREDITATION

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) 2001 describes accreditation as, “the process of external quality review used in higher education to scrutinize colleges, universities, and higher educational programs for quality assurance and quality improvement. Success results in an accredited institution and/or program.

Considering this definition, accreditation agencies do have a role in improvement of quality of education. Therefore, looking at the above scenario the accrediting agencies have an opportunity to work with many higher education institutes including management institutes and facilitate them in improvement of quality and relevance of their program. The agencies may set standards for student recruitment, curriculum development, teaching-learning process, evaluation and grading systems assuring quality and credibility of degrees through accreditation.

However, accreditation in India not only serves as the medium of quality assurance of education it also leads to development of stakeholder‟s faith in systems of higher education and attains a broader goal of sustainable development of management education.

The objective of the accreditation process is to develop a quality conscious system of technical education where excellence, relevance to market needs and participation by all stake holders are ensured. The process focuses on building a professional education system as vendors of human resources that will match the national goals of growth by competence, contributions to economy through competitiveness and compatibility to societal development. It intends to ensure a teaching-learning environment as per accepted good practices and institutions which has the essential and desirable features of quality professional education. For institutions, it signifies their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for future growth, for the industry and infrastructure providers, it signifies, identification of quality of institutional capabilities. (Sahay &Thakur, 2007). ACCREDITATION SYSTEMS TRADITIONAL VS MODERN (INTERNATIONAL)

TRADITIONAL INPUT-PROCESS-OUTPUT SYSTEM

The traditional approach to accreditation of management programmes is focused primarily on the input quality and the process quality. The general belief is that if the input (the student) and the process (faculty, curriculum, facilities and resources) are good and sufficient, then the output (the programme graduates) must be naturally good. This system of accreditation has its merits and has worked reasonably well since there is a high correlation of achieving good output when the input and the process are good. This is akin to a manufacturing facility whereby it is expected that a good product should be achieved with good raw materials and good equipment and process.

The traditional accreditation systems include the following elements and functions as under:

Fig.3. Input-Process-Output Model of Accreditation

Often, weighted scoring system is used in accreditation evaluation. A programme may be granted accreditation when a threshold or passing mark is achieved even though there could be significant weakness or deficiencies in certain criteria. One controversial measure adopted to measure the success of a programme is to assess the passing rate of a cohort. Undue pressure could put on the faculty to pass weak students, contrary to the desire of maintaining a high level of academic standard. In recent years, the phenomenon of grade inflation is well recognized. We are aware that grades alone do not demonstrate a student‟s mastery of the learning outcomes, but rather as a measure of capability in response to the testing or assessment system. Over emphasis on student grading instead of assessing real learning outcomes contribute to the culture of examination-based learning. Testing and grading is a quantitative method not capable of measuring qualitative aspects of the students competencies‟

A key weakness of the traditional accreditation system is the lack of emphasis in verifying the competencies or outcomes of the students learning against a clearly pre-defined set. Insufficient focus is placed on the continuous improvement process of the programme. In recent years the outcome based accreditation system has gained popularity and is the benchmark adopted by the Washington Accord (WA) signatories.

MODERN OUTCOME-BASED SYSTEM

The Outcome Based Accreditation (OBA) system is developed premised on an understanding of knowledge and competencies profiles required at the entry level of professional engineering and management practice. Based on the knowledge and competencies of the profiles, the graduate attributes are developed. The guidance document of International Engineering Alliance on graduate attributes and professional competencies explains that:

Graduate attributes form a set of individually-assessable outcomes that are indicative of a graduate's potential competency. The graduate attributes are exemplars of the attributes expected of a graduate from an accredited program. Please note that a signatory may identify additional attributes that differentiate specific programs accredited by the signatory.

These graduate attributes form the basis for signatories within WA to formulate and benchmark the students learning outcomes for the programme assessment. A programme for accreditation must demonstrate achievement of student learning outcomes in alignment with the graduate attributes. Since the required student learning outcomes are not all easily assessable quantitatively by grading on examinations and quizzes, a combination of quantitatively and qualitatively assessment methods, in the form of a portfolio or rubrics, is normally employed. The continuous quality improvement process for programme quality assurance is an important factor in the accreditation evaluation. The figure illustrates the outcome based accreditation system showing the continuous improvement process.

The outcome based accreditation processes the main thrust is on the quality metric; assessment, evaluation and continuous improvement. The institutes have to incorporate these in their rules and regulations to mandate affiliated institutions to practice uniformly. Apex bodies need to collectively standardize various activities which are almost common and repetitive in nature to conserve time and efforts to enable focus more on system productivity.

Most well-knowninternationalaccreditation agencies like AACSB International (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), ACBSP (The Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs), AMBA (Association of MBA‟s). The European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS), (NAAC) and National Board of Accreditation (for Engineering, Pharmacy, Computer, architecture as of now) follow Outcome Based Accreditation system. These accreditation agencies have developed sound, flexible standards to access quality and support continuous improvement.

Fig.4.Source

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Syllabus

Teaching Methods

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Course Learning

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MINIMAL MODEL VS INPUT-PROCESS-OUTPUT VS OUTCOME BASED ACCREDITATION

MINIMAL MODEL INPUT-OUTPUT MODEL OUTCOME BASED MODEL

This model ascertains basic characteristics of the institution and programme. In general, this model is numeric and law-based. This model ascertains the existence of

infrastructure, size and qualification of the faculty, coverage of basic topics in the curriculum. Further, it provides a prescription for a minimal core and general parameters for the rest of the curriculum. The minimal model is easy to implement and maintain as long as it adheres to the “minimal” philosophy. One of the major drawbacks of this model is that it does not encourage continuous improvement in curriculum, teaching learning process and faculty competency other than qualification.

This model strictly adheres to the core curriculum. It gives direct prescriptions of curriculum and faculty composition. It also specifies parameters for the rest of the curriculum. It makes the accrediting process uniform and potentially fair. The criteria of

this model are unambiguous and often numeric. But, it is difficult to establish and update.

This model is relatively easy to maintain as it is adherent to clear rules. However, there is no scope for innovation and creativity in the curriculum.

This model prescribes a minimum core and basic requirements. It focuses on the goals and objectives of the programme. But, it does not specify the specific goals of the program. Thus provides significant diversity in setting up goals and objectives. It makes that this model is very different from other models. This model requires evidence of measurements to feed a quality improvement process. It is sophisticated and hard to evaluate as it requires a lot of responsibility and risk in the hands of the program leaders.

THE NEW NBA FORMAT

NBA in its present form came into existence as an autonomous body with effect from 7th January 2010, with the objective of Assurance of Quality and Relevance of Education, especially of the programmes in professional and technical disciplines, i.e., Engineering and Technology, Management, Architecture, Pharmacy and Hospitality, through the mechanism of accreditation of programs offered by technical institutions.

NBA has introduced a new process, parameters and criteria for accreditation for Engineering, Pharmacy, Computer, architecture as of now. These are in line with the best international practices and oriented to assess the outcomes of the programme. NBA in its keenness to join the comity of permanent members of Washington Accord has ventured upon to adopt the concept of outcome based accreditation process. NBA is assisted by mentors assigned by the international bodies; in order to line up the students outcomes in conformity with ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC).In the light of this; the NBA and AICTE also need to address universities and institutions providing management education to orient their various programmes and curricula to outcome based approach. National Board of Accreditation (NBA), is therefore currently offering various types of Orientation/Training programme focused on facilitation of Outcome Based Education and Accreditation. These training programmes are a proactive step to sensitize the management institutions about the accreditation processes, about quality assurance and advantages to its progranmes through this affiliation. The training includes development of curricula, quality metrics, assessment, evaluation and continuous improvement which is an integral part of outcome based accreditation.

MODEL FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

Program Educational Objectives Mission And Vision Stakeholders inputs

Graduate

Attributes

Course

Outcome

Learning

Activities

Assessment

Tasks

Assessment

Criteria

Fig.5. Model for sustainability in management education

A Business school engages the community, employers, accreditors, philanthropists, legislators, students, funders, businesses, government, faculty members and number of other stakeholders. The Business School owes to these stakeholders a clear statement that conveys the school‟s priorities. To serve them the school needs to ensure that its mission is relevant to its stakeholders and the processes designed to achieve its goals are well management for

effectiveness and efficiency. The mission statement should make the responsibility of its faculty member, for the creation of the community of learners, explicit. Also it should articulate the student population it seeks to serve along with the nature of learning it offers them. Students, and even other stakeholders, should be able to clearly differentiate individual business schools from other schools in terms of their respective aim and priorities. Initiatives of the institution, such as revision of curriculum, introduction of new programs of study, addition of physical facility, etc, should be consistent with the priorities suggested by the mission statement.

Continuous quality improvement process is inherently embedded in the OBA system as shown in the figure 4 .The programme must articulate well defined Programme Educational Objective (PEO) and Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) also known as Graduate Attribute. The institution resources are to be deployed and the curriculum, the teaching and learning environment are to be structured to enable the achievement of the SLO.

PEOs are broad statements that describe the career and professional accomplishments that the programme is preparing graduates to achieve.SLO or Graduate Attributes are narrower statements that describe what students are expected to know and are able to do by the time of graduations. These relate to the skills, knowledge and behaviours that students acquire in their study through the programme. The achievement of SLO and PEO must be demonstrated through a measurement or assessment process. The totality of programme SLO is contributed by a combination of individual course modules and other curricular and extra-curricular activities. Each Course module should have a stipulated course objective and learning outcomes. It is the responsibility of the course teacher to assess and monitor the learning outcomes of the particular course module. The close-loop in figure 4shows the involvement of the course teacher in the continuous quality improvement process.

The process involves close monitoring and corrective actions from the programme management or accreditation committee. The achievement of SLO at the programme level is evaluated base;8d on the aggregate outcomes delivered by individual course modules and other activities. Shortfalls are to be corrected by appropriate actions. SLO/ Graduate Attributes are assessed at the point the students have completed the programme. The inputs and feedbacks from the stakeholders are used to evaluate against the articulated PEO. PEO is evaluated for a batch of graduates has worked for 3-5 years.This process of outcome based accreditation (OBA) apart from providing the programme recognition; the major benefit of OBA is derived from the “forced” incorporation of the system of continuous quality improvement process in education programme.

KEY STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES OR GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES FOR MANAGEMENT GRADUATES

Though the PEO might differ for various institutes depending on their mission and vision but a common pool of SLO/ graduate attributes can be identified by studying various organization profiles that the management graduates work for. National Board of Accreditation (NBA) India have classified attributes into three categories as “Knowledge”, “Skills” and “Behaviour” that the student must be posses as he completes the course. Further, each attribute may have range of elements that the students must demonstrate which can be course specific. Though there is no standard classification of attributes for management education and can include a variety of elements for these attributes author has tried to identify a few elements based on the literature review.

Knowledge Skills Behaviour

Understanding and knowledge of systematic body of knowledge

Identifying, Gathering, evaluating and using information

Personal Skills

Interpretation and application of knowledge

Understanding of social, cultural and economic environment

Application of knowledge in different situations

Flexibility

Awareness about environment sustainability issues

Developing, planning and managing independent work

Independent thinking

Understanding and appreciation of international perspectives in global environment.

Problem solving Strategic thinking

Decision making Interpersonal Skills

Listening skills

Present, discuss and defend views

Transfer and receive knowledge

Negotiation skills

Group dynamics Fig.5. Graduate Attributes for management graduates.

KEY BENEFITS OF OUTCOME BASED ACCREDITATION Enables the institute to make a benchmark of its own.

Provides the institution with the direction for pedagogy that focuses on continuous improvement Helps the institute identify areas of improvement

Increases the brand image of the institute by giving affiliation

Disseminate the right information to the society about the quality of education provided by the institution. Throughout the world the outcome based accreditation by an external agency has become a part of governing system of management education. It leads to mutual recognition and globalisation of management education. ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FACING THE INSTITUTES ENROLLED FOR ACCREDITATION

Understanding clearly the requirements, procedures and policy of OBA

Setting appropriate PEO and SLO which are relevant, measurable and meeting OBA requirements. Avoiding low outcome standards

Obtaining support from top management to institute outcomes based teaching and learning

Buying in form faculty on the benefits of OBA and securing their commitment in implementing the continuous quality improvement mechanism, particularly at individual course module.

Training faculty on assessment and evaluation methods which support OBA.

Instituting the continuous quality improvement mechanism and having people and resources to monitor the process.

Obtaining support and feedback from the stake holders. Having champions to lead, implement and prepare for OBA Giving due recognition for contribution to OBA.

CONCLUSION

The Study reveals that the Outcome Based Accreditation model is a „Learner Centric‟, rather than the traditional „Teacher Centric‟ model. It focuses on mission and vision of the program in designing the outcomes of the program. It emphasizes on first deciding the graduate attributes that a student will have after completing the programme and then organizing the curricula, delivery and assessment to ensure that learning happens.

Following observations can be made about the OBA for management education in India

Outcome based accreditation can bring about a huge change in the quality assurance of management programmes and can serve as an effective international benchmarking.

The OBA for management education is still evolving and many misconceptions and fallacies relating to it need to be resolved.

Apart from recognition of accredited programme, the true value of OBA lies in the inherent continuous quality improvement process.

Effective implementation of the OBA system is challenging and must involve each and every faculty member.

Stakeholders must be involved in the formulation and evaluation of PEO and SLO.

This paper highlights the role of OBA as a continuously evolving process that helps management schools to meet the challenges posed by the dynamic context. The paper would help business schools enrolling for the outcome based accreditation to know the nuisances for this process and the challenges that they may face. The paper considers NBA‟s new outcome based accreditation program which is too recent phenomenon to comment on the implications of it on management program. The researcher has therefore focused only on changes in the process as compared to the older one and can draw attention on the challenges faced by the business schools enrolled in this accreditation program.

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