The pandemic has brought sharp focus on to the students with the entire education community scurrying about to come up a suitable solution to the learning needs of the students from diverse background devoid of personal contact and safety and comfort of a classroom where the prevailing bonhomie often helps the students in their learning and growing. This is particularly true of the school system and even in Higher Education institutions (HEI) the personal networking and contacts that get established in the classroom has suddenly been lost requiring the schools to find new ways of keeping everyone on the same page.
In a recent a virtual panel discussion on Oct. 15 entitled “The Future of Business Education in the U.S. and China,” hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford King Center on Global Development, the leaders addressed how the pandemic has forced profound changes in how their institutions operate.
The insert at the AACSB website the educational leaders feel that going back to business as sual in the post pandemic scenario is not as easy as it sounds. Instead, education leaders at Stanford, UC Berkeley and Hong Kong University see their curriculum leveraging the flexibility virtual learning can provide while also incorporating a renewed sense of purposefulness in addressing some of the problems that the pandemic and recent social movements have amplified.
The Stanford Presient Tessier-Lavigne pointed to two major disruptions that has taken place. The first related to understanding the medical, epidemiological and social “The first is an increased focus on accelerating the application of knowledge,” he said, pointing out that when COVID-19 came to California in the early spring, Stanford researchers rapidly pivoted to respond to the medical, epidemiological and societal dimensions of the pandemic. “This model of accelerating the application of knowledge has promise across countless fields of research.”
The second lesson was how the pandemic has forced a bold experiment with moving operations online.“From remote education to telehealth to work from home – faculty, students and staff have found new ways to study and work this year. The opportunities that this provides to make education and health care more accessible long after COVID has subsided have tremendous potential, at Stanford and beyond,” Tessier-Lavigne said.
Even in business education front, the new normal has created newer opportunities bringing together companies and campuses in a more comprehensive and seamless manner and this trend only will grow and expand in the coming months, pandemic or no pandemic.
A Tehnia Addnode group sums up the prevailing situation in the following terms. 'It’s thrilling to see that many of our customers are busy delivering the “new norm”, leveraging the capability of pre-existing engineering business systems. Then there are organisations operating on a reduced scale, feeling uncertain about the midterm and lacking the confidence to consider investment or technological solutions. But we also know that a few companies out there have decided a holding position is unsustainable – these are the companies that really need support during this period."
The article points out that after the recent release of 3DEXPERIENCE On Cloud R2021x Dassault Systèmes have unveiled a bold, new offer to help support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) adjust to new ways of working. This exciting offer is empowering business, operational and digital continuity for organisations with legacy 3DEXPERIENCE installations. With up to 50% off each role taking part in the Business Must Go On offering, this is precisely the relief that many businesses will be looking for. Areas like co-design, co-simulation and co-manufacture are the concepts that are being bandied about in the industry.
In recent Financial Express article "for many companies, it’s a matter of survival, but for others, the changes have been a silver lining amidst the crisis". Overhauling or refining a business model should be an ongoing part of running a company; even successful owners often think about making adjustments. But any crisis forces owners to reassess their business. After companies were forced to lay off staffers during the Great Recession, many turned to freelancers when they began hiring again. That saved money on salaries and benefits and gave owners more flexibility.
In India, more than four million jobs have already been lost as the industries are bleeding from low business and sticky payments. The pundits say the the job losses are going to be the norm than an exception as the industries adapt to new business environment and rapid use of technology to replace manpower.
According to a joints report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), two third of apprenticeships and three quarters of the internships have been interrupted thanks to the pandemic. The challenge for the industry to not only get these people back on rolls but also find jobs for nearly 660 million youth who are going to fill the unemployed people's ranks. Technology infusion in this scenario would only exacerbate the situation.
In the short run technology infusion may help stem the tide of financial losses but in the long run, it is people who matters", observes Prof B.V. Krishnamurthy, an independent international consultant observes.
In other words, it is time for industries to collaborate with B-school campuses to nurture new talent who would respond not only to tectonic shift in technology use in manufacturing and services but also shape a new world with empathy and understanding