Bulldoze the business school

I have an undergrad business degree, and a lot of the criticism in the piece is fair. Most of what you learn is common sense. There's a reason there are plenty of people in history that have been able to build multimillion dollar businesses without very little formal schooling, it's simply not as difficult as engineering or chemistry.

I was a marketing major, and really there is no value in the credential past an undegraduate level. The journals that professors publish in have no relevance to people working in the field, and are borderline gibberish. To have a masters or PhD in marketing is entirely useless unless you want to become an academic.

There's also a lot of make work in the business school. I studied political science as my minor and found the papers had a lot less "work" from a volume point of view, but I learnt a lot more and was challenged to think a lot.

That seems to me a bold claim to me - don't actually teach anything, just demand stuff! And behold, by pure magic (and LOTS of selection) we get a handful of successful students who manage to pass, validating this "teaching" style. Is that really what you have in mind?

I'm actually someone who did and does not have a problem with that style. It suits me very well. At university I mostly learned from non-university sources (e.g. using outside text books and ignoring lectures, and doing my own independent research and work on the side). I also finished over 60 edX and Coursera courses during the last five years (some easy, like history of architecture, many hard STEM and medical subjects) - so I like learning by myself. Still, when I go somewhere to be taught and all they tell me is "this is what we want you to be able to do at the end, but you have to go teach yourself" it makes me pretty mad. I had a few such edX courses - you know, if I have to use Youtube and Google I sure can get the necessary knowledge, but then why did I sign up for the course??

There always is plenty of opportunity to let people act independently. Refusing to teach as a way to teach is just lazy and incompetent.

Not sure what the curriculum in the USA/EU is like. Would love to understand what the US/EU model is?

Here is some perspective from some of the top business schools [0] in South Africa:

> ‘What can I do to make the most money?’ and the manner in which faculty members teach allows students to regard the moral consequences of their actions as mere afterthoughts.”

and

> "The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school, and as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans"

Not really the general case. Ethics is done right up front. All the major philosophical ethical theories are covered including: Virtue ethics, Utilitarianism, Duties and rights, Justice, Caring

The consequences of actions is a thread that runs throughout every single course. For each assignment/paper submitted you are required to conduct an ethical analysis of your actions or decisions. This is done to identify any implications or negative consequences.

> " If we want those in power to become more responsible, then we must stop teaching students that heroic transformational leaders are the answer to every problem, or that the purpose of learning about taxation laws is to evade taxation, or that creating new desires is the purpose of marketing."

From what i have seen this is very far from what is taught here in South Africa. You will find lively debates on the purpose of marketing, is it to create demand or to fulfill demand?

> " In terms of the classroom, they expect the teaching of uncomplicated and practical concepts and tools that they deem will be helpful to them in their future careers. Philosophy is for the birds."

Philosophy is actually covered. You are expected to submit a dissertation/thesis as part of the requirement to complete your MBA. In the past the MBA was academically rated lower than a masters from another faculty. You could not even gain entrance to a PHD programme.

There has since been a complete overhaul with the academic requirements significantly increased. The current qualification is rated the same as a masters from another faculty in terms of academic requirements.

> "Why then do we assume that degree courses in business should only teach one form of organisation – capitalism – as if that were the only way in which human life could be arranged?"

Some B-Schools are known to have very 'socialist leanings' in the guise of social innovation/sustainability. With a very strong emphasis on this. The only way i can describe it it is like socialism and capitalism mixed. They pretty much teach you that Friedman [1] is not correct and one needs to move beyond this.

Students that complete typically end up with a bunch of mental models to reason about the world. A student coming out of B-School is faced with a choice:

(A): The B-School perspective becomes their primary perspective on seeing and reasoning about the world

(B): It is only one of the perspectives available to you, that you can pull out when the appropriate situation arises.

The schools themselves help you to identify this and it is up to the student which of these options they take. As one grad described it to me:

> "They teach you all the mental models, then they break them all down and show you how they are incorrect and the negative consequences of them"

> "The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school, and as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans "

Are schools in the US/EU still teaching social responsibility?

The schools here teach you that social responsibility is BS. You are thought that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is not the answer, but really 'window dressing'. What you really need to do is embed sustainability practices[2] throughout your organisation. It is not an afterthought, but should be a core part of business.

[0] https://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/

https://www.gibs.co.za

http://www.usb.ac.za

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/240845-there-is-one-and-onl...

[2] https://embeddingproject.org/

I was talking about the difficulty in switching from the vocational track - to ones that require a degree.

It doesn't sound like this is the case with your professor, but this is actually an increasingly common technique used by professors to weed out the rote-learners. They "teach" deliberately provocative material/view-points and then include it in the exam in the form of a "discuss ..." type question. People who have properly engaged and thought about the material will argue their counter-point while those who simply regurgitate notes will just repeat the professor's teachings. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's particularly popular at many law schools.