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‘Court management’ degree proves a flop in Nalsar MBA: College now scrambles to find corporate jobs for 46 MBA grads

Nalsar Hyderabad, which launched its debut MBA program almost two years ago, has geared up to find placements for its first batch of 55 students after disappointing results so far.

Nine out of the first 55 MBA students that will graduate from Nalsar’s College of Management Studies (CMS) this year have found jobs with Indian financial services group Karvy, media company Progressive Digital Media and financial information provider S&P Capital IQ.

As the law school is preparing to find jobs for its remaining 46 MBA students who are due to graduate this year, it is also grappling with the job market realities facing its experimental MBA specialisation – court management.

Nalsar vice chancellor Faizan Mustafa commented: “Not many people are interested in court management. In fact, the best of the students have not opted for court management. We are now concentrating on finance and corporate governance.”

Lofty expectations

Mustafa had, at the time of launching the MBA programme in May 2013, said that the new degree was a result of upgrading two existing management courses – the Masters in Business Law and Administration and the Masters in Financial Services and Capital Markets.

In creating the MBA degree, Nalsar had also added the court management specialisation to it, becoming the first Indian law school to do so.

While the MBA batch had 60 seats, only 55 were filled in the first year of admissions and around 40 students took admission in the course’s second year. Mustafa said that some students had dropped out of the second batch after getting into better MBA colleges.

On the court management course he commented: “Now we are realising that the salary which the high courts offer to court managers is only in the range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000. And not many people are keen to work in the high court registrar’s office, even though I had written a letter to all the [high court] chief justices [about recruitment of court managers from CMS].”

“I had in mind that if we need court managers - and now every high court has recruited about 50-60 court managers, because the 13th finance commission has made an allocation of about Rs 2,000 crore for court management; And about 2500 court managers were to be recruited - so I thought an ordinary MBA [graduate] cannot be a good court manager unless he knows our judicial process. Therefore with that in mind we started this program,” he explained.

“But I have a feeling that not many people would like to do the job of court management where you have to work along with the registry of the high court. That kind of job does not excite an MBA person. This is my experience. Law graduates can get a job as a law graduate if they are good. Therefore law graduates also will not be very keen to switch over and [become court managers].”

He added: “Because, you see, the job of a court [manager] is that you are doing desk work for the court on the listing of the [cases and] on the case flow management […]. So there is some amount of reluctance on the part of the judiciary to accept some other class of people participating in the judicial process. [Judicial officers] do not want to [divide] their work with [MBA] people. And [MBA graduates] are professionals. So they would not like to become subordinate to judicial officers in that sense. So that’s why a marked division of work has not taken place between these judicial officers and the court managers.”

Market realities

Mustafa said that even though around 18 companies had shown interest in participating in the CMS MBA campus recruitment rounds, it was not easy for students with the court management specialisation to get placed in jobs outside court. “If you have done a specialisation in court management then people will not give you the regular MBA job. If you have done judicial process and case flow management and theories of justice you are not useful for them,” he commented.

Mustafa said the law school did not plan to shut down the MBA program or the court management specialisation, despite the lack of interest of prospective students in court management, and despite the MBA course not filling up to full capacity at the time of admissions.

“There has to be a gestation period of four to five years, two to three batches go out, then only you can decide whether you want to close the course or you want to keep it open,” he commented, adding: “When Nalsar started [its law school it] could fill only 34 seats. For [NLSIU Bangalore] also for the first two to three years [batches filled up to half their capacity]; for Jodhpur, and a number of law schools, initially they were not able to fill seats.”

Lucre in gestation

The CMS MBA’s admission fee is around Rs 8 lakh, out of which the tuition fee is Rs 6 lakh.

This earned Nalsar a net annual revenue of approximately Rs 80 lakh, after deducting expenses, according to Mustafa.

The management school currently has 18 faculty member, one of whom is an IIM Kolkata alum. Mustafa said that around 11 faculty members were full-time and had MBA degrees.

Associate professor Pinaki Pattnaik, who heads the CMS, has two MBA degrees from foreign business schools, according to CMS’ faculty profiles.

“Mostly all MBA [faculty members] are exclusively for [teaching] MBA. There are some law teachers who have been kept for MBA because they are teaching in MBA for MBA courses. There are some MBA courses which are not there in law. But they are law related courses,” said Mustafa.

He said that Nalsar runs a number of postgraduate courses through correspondence – such as the masters in aviation and air transport, primarily attended by air force officers.

However, the CMS will be the next biggest source of revenue for the university after its law degree courses, once the CMS batches start enrolling up to 120 students each year, he claimed.

CMS 2015 placement (Ongoing)

S.No Name of the company Role Offered Number of the candidates Selected by the company Remarks
1 Kotak Mahindra Bank Legal Manager 1 didn't accept the offer
2 Kotak Mahindra Bank Deputy Manager - HR None shortlisted by company in the preliminary stage itself  
3 Royal Sundaram Management Trainee - Legal & TP Claims, Chennai 0  
4 S&P Capital IQ- Round I Research Associate 0  
5 S&P Capital IQ- Round II Research Associate 0  
6 S&P Capital IQ- Round III Research Associate 1  
7 S&P Capital IQ- Round IV Research Analyst- Advance Excel Process yet to start  
8 Karvy- Round I Equity Advisor 4  
9 Karvy- Round II Equity Advisor 3  
10 Axis Bank Fraud Investigation Executive Process yet to start  
11 Bajaj capital Management Trainee/ Relationship Executive Process yet to start  
12 Mumbai Placement Drive Multiple- Letter of Intent - Vodafone, Jaro Education, Kotak Securities and Thomas Cook 6 Letters of Intent yet to be converetd to Offers. Letter of Intent from Jaro Education has been converted to offer
13 Delhi Placement Drive Multiple- Letter of Intent - Times Pro and Faircent 2 Letters of Intent yet to be converetd to Offers
14 HT Media JD Awaited    
15 Tata Capital JD Awaited    
16 IMS JD Awaited    
17 Career Launcher JD Awaited    
18 Bajaj Financial JD Awaited    
19 Progressive Media Assiciate Analyst 1 Offer Made and Accepted

Source: Nalsar

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