In the recent past, the management education in the US has come under fire from a lot of people. The MBA programs have had to deal with a lot of heat from various quarters - for lacking a focus on professional aspects of management - for encouraging learning the textbook - and not encouraging bright ideas coming from students themselves.

However, one of the biggest assets of US educational institutes lies in their ability to react quickly to constructive criticism and do fast non-bureaucratic curriculum reviews - unlike most other university systems. So schools like Graduate School of Business at Stanford, Kellogg School at Northwestern, Sloan School at MIT and the Johnson School at Cornell are among the schools leading the revision of curriculum.

The emphasis has been given on providing the students some real world practical and hands on experience. For example, the students at the Johnson School help in decision-making of a $15-million hedge fund. At the Sloan School, students participate in various corporate-sponsored projects to get hands-on experience. At Kellogg, students choose tracks such as Asset Management Lab, Real Estate Lab, Medical Innovation Lab, etc.

At Stanford, the program realizes that students come from various backgrounds and hence students with relevant backgrounds are allowed to move up to advanced courses. Cross-functional management topics are dealt with small seminars where students work with faculty members.

Harvard’s case-based study pattern has been adopted at a lot of other universities. Studying through real life cases brings the world of real life managerial problems within the scope of the classroom.

Leadership forms an integral part of any good MBA program. However, the carefully tailored courses on leadership and crisis decision-making at Kellogg provide opportunities to deal with strong ethical dilemmas. Similar courses at Stanford, Sloan MIT and Johnson School help students probe their own strengths and weaknesses and reflect of the next steps in their career.

A big part of the reason why such schools in the US have been such a success is the tremendous support they get from the administration. The admin sets up many support groups to aid the students and back-up the faculty. Adjunct faculty help out in many of the experiential courses. These schools also have a very strong alumni network. And these alumni networks have an enormous influence in the industry. The far sighted deans of these universities have also brought about some major changes in the these programs with the support of faculty, funding and financial support and communicating extensively with faculty.

Such changes in Indian institutes seldom reach beyond paper. Failing short of implementation, the leadership at most institutes fail to ‘comprehend the dynamics of change management’ as pointed out in this article. In general, the article says, Indian business schools have much to learn about their own management from their western counterparts.