Nitin Nohria is the first Indian-American Dean of Harvard: some questions

Nitin Nohria, alumunus of IIT-Mumbai, has been named as the 10th dean of Harvard Business School.  He is the first Indian American to hold that position.

“I feel a profound sense of responsibility for continuing Harvard Business School’s proud legacy of ground-breaking ideas and transformational educational experiences,”

Although a chemical engineer, he is currently involved more into Leadership, Management practices, and human motivation in context of corporate success.  He is currently the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration and co-chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard.

While obviously one is proud of his achievement as an Indian American, but one also thinks of the waste that his chemical engineering education has been.  Of what use was it if one has to go on to not add anything to that space?  It is clear that the CHemical Engineering degree was just a plank!  Right after his Chemical Engg B.Tech from IIT-Mumbai in 1984, he followed it up with a doctoral degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in 1988 (where he earned an outstanding doctoral thesis award in behavioral and policy sciences).

And that is sad about India’s education system!  If someone was SO right brained as to be an expert in the “soft issues” of management, why did he necessarily have to go into SO left brained an institution and study as Engineering from the IIT?