India, Sept. 4 -- In India's bustling higher education market, the management degree, once viewed as a golden ticket to career security and social prestige, now finds itself at the centre of a reckoning. For tens of thousands of young Indians who sign up for MBA programmes each year, the rising cost of business school is compounded by the chilling reality of poor campus placement and mounting student loan debt. AsVineet Gupta, founder of Ashoka and Plaksha University, warns, "Management education has to reinvent to remain relevant not only in India but all over the world."

The MBA Boom and the Bust

Over the last decade, management education mushroomed in India in response to surging demand. Today, there are roughly 3,900 management scho...