Promoting entrepreneurship but glorifying MNCs: Our ironic business schools

First of all, a career does not mean working for someone as an employee till your brains and bones beg you to stop or the corporation itself disposes of you after sucking you dry. Yet still, hearing terms like 'Career Centre' or 'Career Services Department' makes you picture an office in your university with some clueless — or rather — lifeless clerks under an unnecessarily overenthusiastic director who, at best, can arrange internships worth Tk3,000 in the name of "settling" their alumni after graduation. 

And this is not even the beginning of the miseries for a student with entrepreneurial aspirations.

Upon admission into a prominent business school of a leading university, the professors preliminarily overwhelm the mindsets of the students with their proposition of building entrepreneurs and business leaders. 

Yet, while browsing through the web and social pages of the institute, all congratulatory posts or news the students find are dedicated to those who landed jobs in the ever-lucrative Management Trainee positions at different MNCs and other corporations. 

This uneven oscillation between what the professors preach and what they applaud leaves them to draw a twisted image of the system they just stepped into. To this end, this further slows down their latent possibilities to create a better and more enlightening tomorrow.

This irony further deepens when one counts in the tangible resources, or rather, the lack thereof, dedicated to earnestly nurturing entrepreneurial ambitions. While our business schools are quick to hold swashbuckling entrepreneurship expos and occasional, big-budget startup fortnights, these largely manifest empty opportunities rather than pursuable scopes for new beginnings. 

On top of that, the curriculum rigidly remains theoretical, offering nearly zero insight into the lean operations, bootstrap mentality, and grit required for a new venture to survive, let alone prosper.

This one-sidedness extends most painfully to the recognition aspect. The university campus is colorfully decorated every semester with banners containing photos of alumni who have scaled the corporate ladder, their smiling faces framed next to logos of globally recognised brands. The convocation ceremonies include separate segments to honour them most gracefully. Undeniably, the hardships they remain committed to overcoming certainly deserve acknowledgement.

However, the minimum appreciation towards those students who not only sacrificed weekends and passed sleepless nights but also forewent a comfortable salary as well to launch a sustainable e-commerce platform, or build a socially conscious enterprise from the ground up, remains unfound. The absence of practical stories of alumni starting and fairly managing entrepreneurships out there from their own alma mater plays a big role in discouraging students from taking the less-travelled route.

This rash persistence in glorifying corporate executives, dishearteningly at the expense of supporting and valuing aspiring entrepreneurs, stomps out the unlit dreams way before they can sense any slightest form of enlightenment. This must be equitably fixed.

Coming back to these "Career Centres", their responsibilities by definition should expand beyond simply pushing students into "The Nameless Nillionaire Corporations Private Limited", that too, for three months only. Rather, although it is more than too late already, these offices should be equipped with the expertise and resources to guide aspiring entrepreneurs with the nitty-gritty of beginning a new venture. This should essentially include the procedures pertaining to business registration, legal compliance, market research, and most importantly, fundraising.

To this end, more constructive and informative workshops regarding pitching to investors, intellectual property protection, and practically building mobilisable business models should be realistically designed and held regularly. Not only will this change aid the aspirants to a significant extent, but it will also prevent them from becoming an aforementioned Nillionaire Corporation themselves. Besides, these centres must strengthen their job placement services much more adequately in terms of developing and placing students in firms of a more appropriate standard.

University professors have a key accountability in this transformation of perspectives and actions. From their respective positions, they should unite and hold materializable discussions with the university funders, relevant industry bodies, as well as concerned government agencies. They should be collective in conviction for formulating liberal policies that make doing business more convenient for the educated youth, cutting through red tape inertia, and creating a healthier passage for them into the business world.

On a positive note, encouraging the emphasis on entrepreneurship among not only business students but every learner on more comprehensive aspects will also effectively develop future executives to be more proactive towards adverse challenges. This will thus allow them to become more reliable as managers, as well as the institutions they will be managing, will improve the possibilities to operate much better and bigger. 

An effect, then, should fall onto the sustainability of the nation's business institutions, reducing sunk costs and broken hopes. This will ultimately contribute to delivering a more resilient and innovative economy for the future.

Therefore, it is time for a realistic reimagining of what a "career" truly means, and for our institutions to walk the entrepreneurial talk more loudly.

Nafis Ehsas Chowdhury is a business student.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standar