I feel very blessed and fortunate to be a student of Prof. Ashok Pratap Arora sir during my doctoral research at MDI Gurugram.  In initial days, our meetings used to be of 2-3 minutes wherein he would ask a question and I had no answer. So, we agreed to meet next time with an answer. This continued for a long and every time the question was so intriguing and pertinent that it made me think for days and some time even months to read books and discuss with other senior professors. But in the later part of research, discussions were done at length. There is a lot more to share about lessons from him and many other teachers,  but will keep it for my personal experiences only. In this post agenda is something else.

Once he was invited to Banasthali Vidyapith by Prof. Harsh Purohit, Dean, Faculty of Management Studies – WISDOM to share his ideas in an FDP on the theme of Management Teachers of the Future.

This talk was so interesting and explained through a very interesting analogy. So here are few excerpts from it:

In the talk on management teachers of the future, he elaborated a few very important ideas that the management teachers need to understand. To make the point clear in simple words he took the analogy of a travel agent.

He drew parallels between these two jobs by taking the scenario of about 20 years ago when a person would go to a travel agent because he or she did not have and information access about trains operations – like frequency, destination, arrival-departure timings etc. The information was readily and easily available with travel agents. Now, coming to the present scenario where because of digitization, the information available is easily on Railways website and other travel portals. The person did not go to any travel agent for information.

So, what travel agents did? Went jobless?

No.

They now started to offer travel consultancy and end-to-end planning. Those who didn’t upgrade, become extinct.

Similar is the case in the education field, especially management education. In olden days, a management teacher was respected for the information he could hold on and process. But, in the age of Google, YouTube, Coursera and other learning platforms, it is a rare possibility that a student would come to a teacher for information on theories and frameworks of management.

Now the teacher needs to be ready with the analytical solutions to the  queries and problems of a student. The teacher needs to be more of guide / consultant / trouble-shooter / mentor who can understand the problems / needs of the candidate and deliver the customized solution. This will also be needed in entrepreneurship education.