What if you don't like NIFT MFM course

Dear Priyank,

I took admission in management dept. this year.I just wanted to know a little more about this course, because I am not at all liking this course. First of all a B school must not work in functional timings like 9 to 5 as NIFT management timinngs takes one back to High school.A B school should have a campus with hostel where students are staying like in IIM's, students are called at 11 0' clock night if there is any guest lecture coming.This sort of environment is needed for management education.

And most important about faculties,I am sorry to say that NIFTmanagement faculties require a lot of training I guess.And also some 5-6 faculties are teaching whole management stream..this I feel is insufficient.

I need a suggestion...do I write CAT again and try for MICA or any other top B school?

Dear,

 

Thanks for your candid ( and should I say somewhere true?) outburst. However there are a few things that need to be understood.

First of all the fashion management course in NIFT is not a business management course in true sense. It starts from understanding of the category ( most of it is apparel as it is an evolution from the earlier course - AMM - Apparel Marketing and Merchandising), goes through the quality aspects and deals with the logistics and selling aspects of fashion. Thus it prepares you for a specific stream of business. It deals with lots of 'soft' issues such as color- style- design- visual merchandising etc. which is unlike in any other business management course which concentrate on profit. Here "marketing" is redefined as "merchandising", product is redefined as "category", Technology is understood as "Garment Manufacturing Technology", selling as "retail management", Logistics as "supply chain management", Materials as "warehousing", computers as "ERP",production planning is called as "range planning" and so on. So you see a whole new vocabulary has developed around fashion management. Hence to compare a Fashion Managament course with a B-School course would be imperfect.

Faculty in NIFT should take cognizance of the dependence on product and process knowledge ( Fabrics, garments and Garment Manufacturing) for Fashion Management apart from the fact that apparel retail management is different from a regular retail management course. But I am sure they are doing their job pretty well. The only thing is that most of them are pretty new and not exposed to the vagaries of apparel industry.

About Placements I have written elsewhere in the blog.

If you dont like the course, that is one thing, you should go ahead and take your CAT. But if you have some passion about the business of fashion this is the right place you are in.

Careers in Journalism for Fashion Professionals

Fashion Professional, or for that matter any professional, is required to communicate extensively at various levels. The communication may be with clients who want to know the progress of their merchandise, it may be with the suppliers and producers of fabrics or it may even be with the boss, who want the reports succintly and effectively presented to him. Lot of professionals learn this art through experience. However, it would be brilliant if these skills can be had right at the onset of one's career. A course in journalism can help you in gaining those skills with ease and under guidance with able mentors.

Career in journalism in itself can be very rewarding. As a fashion professional you can work in fashion magazines like Vogue, Elle or work in fashion channels. If you want to leave the fashion industry altogether there are a lot of entertainment and media venues you can venture into. You can work with CNBC, if you have a liking for business or work with Balaji Telefilms if home entertainment is your forte. A survey said that the entertainment and media are the two hottest careers in the time to come.

An effort to this direction has been made by 9.9 School of Convergence by introducing a course in Diploma in Applied Journalism .The admissions are open with the session starting from September 20th.

The aim of this course is to inculcate in a person the high quality editing, writing and reporting skills. The classes are scheduled on Sundays so that the professionals dont have to leave their regular jobs. One can contact them and find more about the details.

As their website suggests, their placement services or "career services" do more than just getting a student a full time job. The career is shaped from the beginning of the course looking at a person's abilities and aspirations. The 9.9 School of Convergence has 100% placement with clients like NDTV, STAR, CNN-IBN to boast of . The leadership team has Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha, Dr. Eric D Saranovitz, Pooja Kothari and Gunjan Aggarwal who have links deep into the media industry.

It can be understood that with a specialisation and a career in journalism, the jobs will be much more enriching and satisfying ( and more lucrative) than with a specialisation alone.