This article is an interaction of Pople matters magazine with Dr. Uday Salunkhe regarding the shortcomings and the key issues in terms of quality of talent in the postgraduate level

1. Cover Story View: Prof. Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group
Director, Welingkar Education
What are the key issues in terms of quality of talent in the postgraduate level?
There are more than 3000 business schools in India, but quality is available only from the top 100
schools. The rest are not able to provide the required level of quality due to lack of a vision community
comprising of the board of governors, institutional Leadership, good faculty, industry exposure and
interface, teaching learning process among others.
In your opinion, where will we see maximum talent shortage in the coming years?
The maximum talent shortage in the coming years would be sectors/verticals such as e-business, Retail,
healthcare, BFSI, Agribusiness, Education, Infrastructure KPO, Travel and Tourism, NGO / Social Sector,
Media and Entertainment etc. Business schools will need to design curriculum to develop talent in these
sectors.
What can be done to improve the quality of majority of students joining the workforce?
Business schools and corporate need to decide on the practical skills which any student need to have
before he/she joins the industry and emphasize on the practical exposure more than the theoretical
approach of getting more marks. This exposure can be made mandatory as part of curriculum. Emphasis
needs to be laid on developing one’s ability to think independently with a 360 degrees approach, interpret
& correlate the happenings in the environment and in turn foresee its impact. This will result in
developing a creative mindset with an ability to learn, unlearn and relearn and thereby foster innovation.
Innovation driven practices and teaching learning process apart from the infrastructure will aid better
learning. I also visualize that the course structure and pedagogy will have to increase focus on character
building, transformational leadership and to generate managers with a vision rooted in Indian values and
having global perspective.