Bachelors and Managers

         If your child’s a Board (pun unintended) student, this one’s for you.

Once, there was B.A., B. Com. and B.Sc. If you were a girl, you could do Home Science. If you were ‘differently talented’ (in those politically incorrect times we said ‘failed’) in academics, you did Commercial Art or an ITI diploma. Graphic Designers, Culinary Specialists and Art Historians were decades away. The more skill your qualification required and the years of training to get mastery in it, the better you were paid and respected.

You could specialize in sub-subjects. For example if you did B. Sc. (Zoology), you could do M. Sc. in cytology, embryology, anatomy, and other tongue-twisters.        

Sometime after the 11 standard SSC became 10 plus 2, these departments sprouted: Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Biochemistry, Biophysics. The other streams had already caught up. Doctors had suffixes besides MBBS and Ph.D: BHM, BAM, BUM (for Bachelor of Unani Medicine. Honest).

Now we have MDs in Medicine Alternativa who cure you holistically. Acupuncturists and Reiki certificate-holders sniff down at the Naturopaths, Gemmologists, Numerologists, Chiropractors and Astrologists. You don’t even need to be ill to visit one of those. If you’re feeling down in the dumps, eat sprouts. If you’ve had a quarrel with your neighbour, throw a karela juice party. Bugged by the traffic jam? Sms your horoscope to your fave ‘reader’.

I’ve learned that BMS (Bachelor of Management Studies) is different from a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration). Does the difference lie in fee structure? Don’t know.  

In these days of gender neutral vocabulary, unusual that we’re still talking of Bachelors and Masters. There are Bachelors of/in Mass Media, Computer Applications, Insurance Management,  Actuaries, Event Management and more.

Some old BAs are dead: like BA (Pali). Pali- an ancient language in which Buddhist texts were written. I don’t know what the ‘Pali graduates’ did with their knowledge except teach others what they knew.  

But I stray…

The MBA sneaked into academia in the ‘sixties, to creep and crawl into every cranny of career-driven youths’ lives. And of their parents. Don’t have the high IQ or slogging power to get into an IIM?. Don’t worry.

One can get an MBA from a corner grocery shop (CGS) these days. Who or what the ‘graduates’ from these institutions are managing is something I can’t guess. For the entrance exams to get into these CGS MBA courses, there are private coaching classes….. business begets business.

Then there’s the MHA= Masters in Hospital Administration. Or DHA= Diploma in the same stuff. You don’t need to be a doctor to do them and you can tag ‘hospital’ alongside your name and romp around impressing people. You can do it (the course, not the romping) full time, part time, half time and through ‘distance’ (the word ‘correspondence’ is defunct; like ‘cookies’ killed biscuits and ‘apartments’ killed flats).

Next arrived the M in PA (Pharmaceutical Administration) and MT (Medical Tourism). Is Hospital Admin different from Healthcare Admin? Dunno: both are MHAs. And a new one: Book-keeping Management Administration.

Some slow-to-change who believe that HRM, alongside Finance and Systems, is the route to the top, have grudgingly begun to consider other courses for their wards. Like Master of Disaster Management. I don’t understand … does MDM teach you to make a perfect calamity? To create emergencies? Are terrorists Masters of DM? Ignorama Blissus, that’s me.

There are less advertised courses specializing in managing museums, aquaria, circuses (ok, I made up the last two).

Many of these Biz Mgt types slog and slave for non MBAs for a salary. Projects of Time Motion Studies and data entries, reports generation don’t require originality of thought, creativity, or enterprise. Their work could be done by very bright clerks. For good money and glory, I must add.

When I see the numbers of ‘M’s in different kinds of Administration and then see the small but focused lot of students who are taking up pure science (India’s doing pretty well in the Maths/Physics/Bio Olympiads), and geography, I know that things are a-changing.  

When children choose not to do the regular grind of computer/medical stuff and ignore acquaintances which do the ‘poor thing’ ritual with parents, they prosper.

In Goa we have examples of those who’ve done well in unusual subjects. One, studying reptiles (Aaron Lobo and Rahul Alvares).

It’s the quest for knowledge and consistency in effort that makes the difference. Not the label.

Back to the young managers… they’re busy learning how to manage, not knowing what they want to manage. No school teaches that. That, Dear Parents, is where you step in.

This is the season of entrance exams: Good Luck all.