While studying business management, students learn the intricacies of managing a business enterprise. Business schools teach them all those subjects necessary for the growth of their mental skills while giving them a complete picture of how the corporate world operates. Each semester, they are also tested for their presentation and report writing skills, which accentuates classroom learning.

Although teachers try their best to inform and enlighten the students, there are certain aspects of professional studies which keep students at bay from the harsh realities of life. Throughout their time of doing bachelors or masters, the students are asked to broaden their mental horizons to a completely new level. They are expected to make business plans, come up with new ventures, prepare marketing plans, conduct research studies, formulate advertising strategies, analyse financial statements and give their own views about a product, service, or business by using the knowledge they have gained through their studies. Professional studies give so much confidence to the students that they start living in a confined fantasy world where every opportunity seems to be at their doorstep.

In classroom lectures, teachers use phrases such as ‘when you will become marketing managers …’, ‘as brand managers you will …’, ‘as a finance manager you should …’ and these words are pleasant to the ears because students continue with their studies with a notion that professional life in the future will be much better than the present. However, they are in for a shock when they make a transition from imagination and enter the cutthroat competitive professional world.

It is true that a fortunate few do get the job of their choice, but a majority of the fresh graduates have to begin from the lowest level in a company — they begin their career either as a management trainee officer (MTO) or at a junior level position. It is also true that MBA graduates have to do office work, which is not in line with what they were taught or what they were told. Teachers must inform their students that the professional world is not all sunshine and rainbows. The dilemma with our education system is that students do gain education but the teachers conceal the truth while using jargons and statements that keep the students glued to their studies.

Hammad, a 26-year-old MBA graduate working as a domestic business officer, says that students are unaware of the realities they have to face in the professional world. He says, “The students are asked to live in a fantasy for the duration of their studies, but their fictional bubble bursts once they begin their jobs, leaving them in a state of disbelief that this is not the professional life which they were told about. This also becomes a stress factor for many students who have to take up a job, which is based on reality, and not what they had expected for so long.”

Another student, Bilal, who is currently doing his MBA, shares his views by saying that whatever the students are taught in class does make sense but he thinks such kind of knowledge is not needed in practical life, especially in the early years. Bilal has done a few internships with reputable companies and banks and has an idea that classroom lectures are linked to good grades; however, it does not equip the students with the weaponry needed to deal with the professional world.

The problem is both with the educational structure and how the students are taught here. Teachers don’t teach in detail and focus only on what is written in textbooks. Students, on the other hand, are also not interested in studying because the system doesn’t compel them to use their brains but to follow what their teacher dictates.

There are some teachers who have a different teaching methodolgy, they don’t use books but stimulate the student’s mind with their professional experience. Even if personal experience is shared, students are not told the harsh realities of the corporate world. Teachers tempt the students with the glitter surrounding a great job, a salary package, and a status that comes with it. The hardships one has to endure when beginning as fresh graduates is kept a secret.

It is ironic that teachers emphasise only on a future where one is a brand manager, advertising executive or a finance manager. They use such descriptions to help the students in taking interest in their studies; otherwise if the students knew that they would do just paper work for the first few years of their professional lives, they would not study with passion at all.