Virender Kapoor

Return on Investment-
What ROI can you expect from a Post graduate Management program.

Virender Kapoor

It is an irony and also a reality that today people look at education as a financial instrument. While it is good to know what you are getting into and what’s in it for you, it may not be right to view education as an instant cash cow or an ATM for that matter. This is a typical mindset of ‘instant gratification’ and it is time that young India understands this in the right perspective. It is unfortunate that parents and students have a myopic view in this regard. That is why many young boys and girls get mislead into choosing something that fails to pay dividends later in life. Good education is a long term investment if one still insists on looking at it as an investment.
Let us look at a simple example as an illustration. An IAS entrant or any first class gazette officer in the early seventees started his career with a pay scale of less than Rs 500/- a month. Forty years down the line, after the sixth pay commission his salary is pegged today at around Rs 80,000/- a month, which comes to a hundred and sixty times jump! This happened because he or she got into the ‘right track’ and a right grooming thereafter. Building up the knowledge base and grooming is what a good education will do for a student and hence will enable him to get on to the right track.
In case of a management discipline one must look at it as more vocational than educational. A good management program must not only give you a degree so to say, but should put a student through a grilling process so that a fully baked product is created which is ready to be employed. Such a program should be able to change your track. This is the key and the essence of education which students and their parents must understand.
OK, so you are on the right track and let us say after your two year management program you are employed at Rs 30,000/- per month. Taking the multiplication factor of 160 arrived at earlier – though corporate sector gives you higher and faster raise than the government jobs- your remuneration in the last year of your career would be Rs 480,000/- per month which is a whopping 5.76 Crores Per Annum. Don’t forget you have also earned progressively for full forty years.
So what do we learn from this simple arithmetic? Good education is Sarswati and money is Laxmi. You run after Sarswati and Laxmi will automatically follow you. There are no two ways about this. I get surprised and also dismayed when some students seeking admission to a management PG program make their choices largely on the fee factor and the kind of first job they expect from campus. Some of them are so ill informed that they feel that their first job should get them their entire fee back in one year. This is the biggest folly.Why do they forget that a good education and training will equip you to earn with compounded returns over the next four decades. But the bottom line here is that you must go for a program which can groom you, grill you and make you job ready. So don’t kill that proverbial Golden goose that can give you a golden egg everyday in order to get all the eggs together