INTERVIEW WITH FR. CASIMIR RAJ, DIRECTOR, LIBA

A man who knows what he is, and who goes about doing what he does with a sense of vision.  That in effect sums up Dr. Casimir Raj SJ, a Jesuit priest, the only priest in the whole of Asia to hold a doctorate in Marketing Management.  He is the Founder-Director of the Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA), which is easily one of the best in Chennai and whose part-time course was ranked Seventh in India.

I founded LIBA in 1979, mainly because I found that in the South we do not have a good management institute apart from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore.  IIM, Bangalore is not accessible to ordinary people and so I wanted to start this and slowly develop it into something like XLRI in the south.  To cater to the south as well as compete with other schools on an all India basis.  In the beginning I deliberately chose not to go in for a University affiliation.  At that time there was no All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), we were giving only Loyola College Diploma.  Because if we were to go in for University affiliation, we would have to become very inflexible, the courses would not be very much up to the mark, as we would have to follow their syllabus, which I did not want.  And I found that it worked very well because even as a part-time course, the Business World had ranked LIBA seventh in India.

At that time management education itself was not very popular, there were not so many institutes.  Today we have 700 odd institutes.  Since we were one of the first to start in Chennai, we had very good students.  Then of course, the AICTE came into existence and they gave us recognition.  I had left LIBA by then.  After I had left, they concentrated on giving a social thrust, which is fine, no problem about that.  They wanted to cater to the marginalised and the poor.  But if you want to lift the marginalised and the poor, you got to have quality education, which will meet the needs of the time.  In providing the social thrust, the quality suffered, it need not have suffered but it was compromised in the process.  Though they built up the infrastructure, on academic aspects LIBA became rather poor. 

Changes were taking place in the country, the way business was done was changing but the courses remained rather outdated.  The standards were not up to the mark and students were not given the freedom to choose.  Being postgraduate students, they know what they want, so they should be given the freedom to choose with a certain amount of guidance.  This is where we failed.  So when I came, though I was happy with the infrastructure that was in place, I was not so happy when I went through the curriculum.  The course was a little weak and the teachers were also following rather traditional method of teaching, like in a college.  I wanted to make a thorough change and make it fast; because change in today's world is fast and we need to be in tune with it.  Secondly, Chennai itself has so many institutes, and in India so many business families have started business schools, and they do not have a problem of resources. So we have to compete with them and improve the quality.

I am really happy to be back here.  It's kind of my baby, and I am very emotionally attached to it.

These are all part of the changes towards improving the academic aspects about which I was speaking earlier.  What I have done now is that I changed the full-time course timings for the time being and offered a lot of electives to the students.  Earlier on, they were in college only till about 1 p.m. and after that they had their own plans.  In order to focus them only on their studies this move was made.  The electives were chosen very carefully seeing the needs of the time and also future developments.  We also recruited teachers from all over the country to teach the courses in which they were experts.  So we never compromised on quality, though the cost is very high. It is because we wanted to offer a very good program.

I also want to make the full time course a residential program, where all the students will have to be in the hostel here, whether they are from Chennai or from anywhere else.  First of all, the students will be available to learn literally for 24 hours.  Facilities like library, computer centre will be open for 24 hours and deliberately we will hold classes at 10 p.m. or 12 p.m.  We want to simulate the business environment, because when they are executives they will have no time.  That experience I want them to get in the school itself so that they are prepared for the real time environment.  We will leave them to manage the hostel, and so they will learn first hand, how to manage something like that.

We abolished arrears because, when we had the system, a student will pass but after many attempts and then he also manages to get an A degree.  And another fellow gets B degree in the very first attempt.  The real quality of the student is not reflected in the grade that he gets.  Whereas now, a student may be weak in certain areas and that weakness is reflected in the grades. At the same time if he is good at other things, that is also reflected.  This system of having to pass compulsorily in the first attempt, truly reflects the student's capacity in various areas.

It was called LIBA, standing for the Loyola Institute of Business Administration.  In the 80's there was a strong group among the Jesuit priests who thought business people were exploiters and that they sucked the blood of others.  The leftist idea was very much prevalent and very strong.  So, this group hated business schools and anything to do with business.  Suppose, if I had called it something else like the Loyola Institute of Management, LIM instead of LIBA, maybe there wouldn't have been so much of opposition.  But its not that I did not think of it, I weighed both options and chose LIBA, because it sounded better than LIM.  When I started I really did not expect this problem, but it really became big.  The problem was from my own brethren.  Still, there is some resistance but by and large it has died down.  Now the Jesuits have started a lot of business schools.  The attitudes have also changed, because they feel that business schools are important for the development of the people and the country.  There are still some die-hards who feel that we should not run business schools.

To tell you frankly,  I can without any hesitation say it is the best in Chennai.  The only competitor in Tamil Nadu I would say is the Bharathidasan Institute of Management (BIM).  LIBA will be among the top two or three in Tamil Nadu.  In India, I really don't know where LIBA would stand but in the course of five to six years, I would like to be among the top 10.  Certainly it is not possible to be among the top five, but definitely I will make it one among the top 15.

We have the Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU), offering correspondence course, the Pondicherry University offering correspondence course... there are so many universities offering MBA degrees. But in these places, you can get the knowledge, not the skill.  A MBA course should teach you specific skills, correspondence courses can give you only theoretical knowledge.  But most of those who are working just want a degree for promotion, and they want to get that without going to school.  The second problem is, we have so many institutes who are willing to take you as long as you can pay; so various students go to various places.  But in LIBA, we are strict from admittance to academics to attendance.  Because many of the students do not want to make such a sacrifice, they do not choose LIBA.

I don't know much about Chennai today.  I was away for 15 years.  When I was here there was the Madras University and LIBA, there was nothing else practically.  Now there are so many.  Almost every college has started an MBA course.  But I can assure you that any University course can give only knowledge and not the skill.  In LIBA, the student has to do a case analysis, project and fieldwork for every subject and not just at the end of the degree. All this will not be there in a University system

There, the students are really motivated and highly competitive and will not mind pulling down the legs of others in their effort to succeed.  But that's the way they work.  They will do any amount of work. That culture has not really set in here, though the first year students are somewhat measuring up to it, the second years are still not into it.  When it comes to the part timers, what I want them to do is to learn to apply the knowledge that they get in the real field.  They already have most of the managerial skills.  The very objective is different, between part timers and full timers.  I am very clear about that.   When it comes the part timers the 'thirst for knowledge' is not really there.  The other day I had arranged for a guest lecture by a very good consultant from America for the third year students.  It was a really rare opportunity that they got.  But I could see a few fellows slipping away, and some of them were in the library.  Those were part-time students, 'executives'. 

Our strength is that we are offering very good education for a low fee and there is a certain amount of dedication in what we do.  The infrastructure is okay.  Weakness is that we have to recruit better students; they should be of better quality.  We also need qualified teachers. Even the infrastructure facility is not really sufficient for a business school, they have not even thought of that.  Now the library will be sufficient for five years, after that it won't be enough, it will have to expand.  The classrooms are good for the high school but not meant for a business school.  One needs to look at a growing institution.  We need to build up a lot of computer databases; we need a lot of reference section books.  The classrooms need to have a different set up. Instead of the present 'theatre style' seating, we should have a 'conference' or U-type of seating arrangement where there can be more interaction, discussions and so on.  This is very important, because the position gives a different atmosphere.  We need to be more computerised and we also have to give them a lot of handouts, cases and so on.

Speaking of Opportunities, we have the chance to be the leading management institution in the South, after IIM, Bangalore.  We need to exploit the brand name of Loyola, which is yet another opportunity.  Eventually Loyola may become a 'deemed university' and then probably we will have a little more freedom academically and otherwise.

The threats that we have to convert into opportunities and then into success are the rapid changes in technology and business.  The other threats are lack of resources and scarcity of faculty.

100%...while last year the highest salary was Rs 25,000/-, the average was around Rs12,000/-.

Complete residential program for the full-time course, Management Development Programmes, Consultancies and if we can get AICTE approval, offer new courses, which are not offered elsewhere.  And very recently we also signed the agreement with Blueshift Inc. We will be making use of their SENATE, which is an online testing tool.

It is set up by the business people that is a very positive point.  The second is that they will get teachers from Wharton, Kellogg and other American Business Schools.  In the long run it won't work. Kellogg professors will come for a week here, Kotler will come once in three years or once in five years and spend a few days and go.  What is the value addition he is going to give you?  And they are all one-year courses, how much can you give at such a cost.  For me, ISB is a question mark.  The IIM's are a brand name on their own and no one can compete with them, all the IIMs are internationally recognised and are moving far ahead.

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