Do We Really Need An MCA?

During the early eighties, when the process of computerization had just started in Indian organizations, the initial thrust was to impart basic skills to all functional managers. Managers were imparted such skills to keep them updated with happenings in information technology.

Today the IT educational background poses a dilemma when inducting management and executive employees. The question which looms up is whether the candidate has enough focus on management aspects if he has done an MCA (Master of Computer Applications) course. On the other hand, if the candidate has an MBA degrees, it still needs to be evaluated whether the subject of IT was truly integrated with the core and functional management papers. In either case, a proper assessment needs to be made whether the manager understands the uses of information technology in daily functions and business. To illustrate potential problems which can arise, take these two organizational cases:

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  Ashish Sharma was retained by a company as a software professional to work on object oriented technology. He was selected through a campus interview of the MCA batch of a premier business school in 1997. A satisfied and content individual, Sharma was identified by the organization as useless within a span of two and half years. The reason cited was that he could not adapt himself to database administration as successfully as he did to object oriented technology. Moreover, Sharma’s juniors also reported him to the management citing unprovoked arrogance on his part which developed strained inter-personal relationships.
  
  
  
   

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  Naresh Kumar was retained by an FMCG company as a management trainee from the same business school in 1997 and was put in the marketing department as a marketing manager. The company retained a consultant to probe into the matters of falling market share. After a thorough review, the consultant suggested a channel sales strategy rather than pushing products through the traditional distributor network. However, he also suggested latest systems back-up support to augment the channel sales strategy. All marketing managers, therefore, should now work on laptops to keep track of their market domain and continuously design innovative reward strategies for pushing products through channels. For better support service, the company loaded ‘sales’ and ‘customer care’ modules of an ERP package. Kumar suddenly became inefficient as he could hardly run the package, and felt comfortable with traditional number crunching. The onsite training given by the ERP manufacturer could not make any difference to Kumar’s style of functioning. 

The basic computer skills were imparted to make managers understand uses of information technology in their daily functions. This exercise of skill transfer suddenly got a big jolt with the mushrooming of ‘made to use packages.’ Such packages have been made so user friendly that they could make basic computer skills redundant. Organizations, therefore, started shifting to focused software packages and functional executives gradually got used to such packages. When the learning process on the basics of computer science among managers receded, a need was felt for professionals with expertise in computer science. It was only then that business schools across the globe started developing separate core professionals with adequate thrust on computer applications. The MCA was designed, drawing a clear line of demarcation between an MBA and an MCA. Universities, however, continued with their traditional BTech, BSc and MTech courses in Computer science and engineering. 

A quick review of the course coverage of MBA and MCA among a few business schools in India leads to some interesting insights. Almost all MBA courses have one core paper on computer applications in the first semester and one paper on management information systems (MIS) in the second semester. MIS, however, is laden with management inputs with some insight on computer applications in management. On the other hand, all MCA courses only have a single core paper on management at the introductory level. Some schools, however, started emphasizing on accounting and finance, business communication, organization behavior and human resource management as non-credit courses. The idea was to equip MCAs with some facets of management to differentiate them from other university graduates. 



Universities hardly focus on management aspects in their MCA or equivalent courses. A single paper of 100 marks incorporates basics of management, MIS and economics in most of the cases. Most of the universities do not offer any flexibility to MBA students to study basics of computer applications.

There are two possible reasons for this–a resource crunch for setting up a well-equipped computer laboratory and a lackadaisical attitude towards any change in the traditional course structure. It is important to note that in universities, cross utilization of computer laboratory facilities is not practiced. For example, in computer science and engineering in most universities, despite having a reasonably well-equipped computer laboratory, MBA students did not have the flexibility to use the computer laboratory.

Interestingly, most of the business schools in India offer specialization in systems management to MBA students in the final semester. There is the system of offering specialization in any area of functional management for MCA students, despite the fact that MCA is a three-year course is non-existent. Incidentally, MBAs with specialization in systems management are better placed than MCAs. The scenario in business schools, however, started showing a reverse trend. This was primarily because of massive recruitment by IT companies, which is going to be short-lived. Such inadequacy and limitations in the course structure in MBA and MCA courses is perhaps responsible for the eventual problems brought forward through the two cases cited. 

A review of the curriculum of MBA courses of leading international business schools shows that they have no core paper on IT. But that does not mean that they have no IT focus. In fact, they have integrated IT with their core and functional management papers with the consequence that IT and management are now inseparable. Many of them have now even discontinued MCA courses. Rather, they are now focusing on MBA courses. Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, INSEAD, California are a few business schools that do this.

In the above perspective, therefore, the continuance of MCA courses, separate from MBA in business schools in India is considered redundant. Current MBA courses in business schools in India have to be restructured to make them completely focused on IT. 






(This article is based on the author’s experience and perception, and has no relation to the institutional policy of Institute of Management Technology,
Ghaziabad.)