Earlier this week, USC business professors Warren Bennis and James O’Toole published a very controversial article in the Harvard Business Review criticizing the approach to teaching that American business schools have adopted. Here’s a summary of the problem from the article’s abstract:
“Instead of measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their graduates, or by how well their faculty members understand important drivers of business performance, they assess themselves almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research. This scientific model is predicated on the faulty assumption that business is an academic discipline like chemistry or geology when, in fact, business is a profession and business schools are professional schools–or should be.”
Alarmed by the disconnect between the methodology that is taught in the classroom and the practical issues that graduates find themselves facing in the business world upon graduation, Bennis and O’Toole insist that some drastic changes in curriculum will be necessary if business schools are going to maintain their relevance and the attractiveness of their degree-holders to recruiters. In a conversation with Business Week Online reporter Francesca Di Meglio published yesterday, they go into a bit more detail about the specific adjustments that they feel are in order, suggesting extensive field work (in the model of other professional schools), as well as study of the humanities.
These comments are of direct relevance to our readers who are still comtemplating the value of an MBA in terms of their careers and options for the future. The full text of the Business Week dialogue is available here.
