The educating of India, like almost everything else, was something our early elected representatives never trusted the private sector with. Thus, it is no surprise that sparse government resources that went towards education veered between a focus on 'institutions of excellence' and a version of education that ended up just below the ordinary or worse.
So we had our few Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and some other scientific and technical institutes that stood out virtually like pilot projects in delivering excellence and thanks to the abject ordinariness of the remaining mass of our education system, there was almost no hope of them ever being replicated on a larger scale. Their relative isolation has helped maintain their standards, but the scarcity of seats has created its own huge demand for admissions. Especially as education is seen as virtually the only way to leapfrog punishing circumstances by the coaching classes in India. Thus, even as this demand mismatch creates its own pressures on these quality management institutes, the market seems to value these schools for the sheer odds that students have to scale to get admission. At B-schools especially, recruiters clearly value the fact. Witness the respect and performance of a B-school like Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi University, despite its relatively low infrastructure ranking in every survey.
Not surprisingly therefore, advertising in education has been a relatively late entrant and the field truly came into its own only in the period post the 1991 reforms, when newer fields of study as well as opportunities opened up. A virtually parallel education system has come up as the private sector moved in to offer courses that would increase the odds of your finding a job, especially if you were outside the cream of government aided institutes. The IT sector was the first to really use advertising well and mention has to be made of NIIT in this regard, for it becoming virtually synonymous with an IT education.
With B-schools, one has to say that what we have seen so far has been relatively diffident advertising and marketing efforts. This is thanks to the fact that the newer ones have used ex-faculty and administrators from mostly government colleges to start with. What we have seen has been media led advertising, as schools have jockeyed to somehow fare well in the many media rankings of B schools by all means possible, besides the many supplements and odd international exchange programme. Outside of this, schools continue to ride on an informal network of alumni, recruiters, training schools and yes, aspiring students who fiddle around with their own parameters to arrive at a decision.
It is noticeable that the Indian School of Business (ISB), probably the only major all round success in perception as well as results in the past five years, has been for all its superb investments in faculty and infrastructure, a noticeably scrimpy spender on marketing. In large part because they simply did not start with a class size that would be a challenge to fill at all. Thus, if one could liken these schools to anything else we see in the markets then it would be to luxury, limited edition brands which command a premium simply because so few exist and yet everyone accepts the superiority of the product. The only difference being that it is not money, but bruisingly hard work and ability that will get you a seat.
So does traditional marketing work at all for B Schools? Considering the fact that no notable private B school has ever shut down yet, I would think, yes. People might cavil at the inability of a lot of the big spending schools to get the aura of the IIMs and others, but as a business that is acquiring customers (students), delivering them something approaching the promised service, and constantly innovating and improving, the big spenders pass the test. These schools have truly treated education as a marketable commodity for those who can afford it, and going by their ever increasing budgets, campuses and student intake, they have clearly been successful. With time, a number of such institutes have also augmented their faculty, infrastructure and other systems to a level where they are actually competing with the 'sarkari' institutes on the hallowed rankings today. In terms of institution building, it was not so long ago when the Manipal Institutes for instance, especially their engineering and medical institutes were not too well respected, due to their open espousal of the donation culture. Today, as far as I can see, students are not at all reticent about mentioning these institutes on their resumes, or being proud to be alumni from these. Clearly, it has been a relatively quick, happy journey of less than a decade to acceptance for them.
When it comes to the future, the present paints a very good picture of what to expect. I believe we will see advertising in the sector boom, with institutes competing with each other to attract students, faculty and perhaps even sops from state governments, like any other industry group. Some successful alumni from some of the best schools, having seen the ingredients for success, are no longer content with training others for admission. While we already have virtual university towns, be it a Kota for its tuition factories or a Kharagpur for its lone IIT, we will definitely see more planned, organized 'clusters', much like what we have in Pune today. Marketing should also get a lot more sophisticated, with schools reaching out to 'acquire' the best students they can, besides the regulars.
Accountability is already seeping in to these efforts, and hopefully, the carpet bombing campaigns we see from B-schools, which seem to convey nothing more than unlimited budgets and limited ideas, will stop. I would expect a lot more targeted campaigns, focusing on specific communities and influencers. Schools also need to realize that parents as an influencer group are in retreat, and to that extent mainline media etc may not be the easy option they believe them to be.
Scholarship programmes should become far more organized, and will be marketed too. Neglected areas like sports will hopefully open up options too, as colleges learn to value having an international level tennis, squash, chess or other players in their classes. Because these high visibility people can offer a truly great option to colleges to get positive PR for their course quality and faculty. Even a Manpreet Brar, when she became a beauty queen, had quite frankly, a very positive rub off on her B-school alma mater. In fact, if anything, it also drove home the point that PR will be a critical determinant of a school's perception. After all, the right B-school should give you a career, bragging rights, improve eligibility in the matrimonial stakes, and a good management education all at the same time. Not necessarily in that order of course!
Prasanna Singh is the Chief Operating Officer and Publisher of afaqs! and The Brand Reporter. He is an alumnus of FMS, Delhi University from the class of 1996.