I agree on the problem with business education. Unfortunately business is not the worst branch of college, and K-12 is even worse than college. Too many unqualified students are in college and the professors have to dumb down the classes so they can pass. Then colleges have to hire dumbed-down professors to teach the dumbed-down students. Much of this is at taxpayer expense. Even the expensive private schools admit dumb students, often on athletic scholarships, and the taxpayer is on the hook for loans which are often not repaid. The default rate will worsen as student debt skyrockets to pay for skyrocketing tuitions. Students are wasting time accumulating debt when they could be out learning a trade and becoming owners, not debtors.
Marketing should be a more solid quantitative discipline. Huge amounts of data are collected by Wal-mart and other retailers. This is somewhat analyzed but not much is reported in the journals by professors. Consumer behavior is taught by folklore more than science.
Finance, accounting, statistics, information systems, management science, and actuarial departments are often fairly difficult and rewarding. But organizational behavior, law, international business, business and society, nonprofit management, and other such "B.S." departments are mostly chit-chat format with grades on the basis of looks and jokes. Unfortunately graduates often carry on like that on the job so we see an increasingly dysfunctional business profession and an economy that is falling behind. Some say the remedy is to make management a profession. Others say no.
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Business Schools Under Fire:
http://www.amazon.com/Business-Schools-Under-Fire-Humanistic/dp/0230349056/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333300946&sr=1-10
WOLFGANG AMANN is the Executive Academic Director of Executive Education and Faculty at Goethe Business School in Frankfurt, Germany
http://www.amandagoodall.com/HumanisticMgmtChapterGoodallApril2010.pdfExperts versus Managers: A Case Against Professionalizing Management Education
I have thought for a long time that non-quantifyable areas of study are a
source of corruptive education by those who have a political agenda to cram
down students throats. Such things as African studies, social studies,
political science, artistic thought, and other make-believe disciplines are
the problem. This is what happened to most business school agendas and what
led to students having to complete college in excess of four years. Too many
non-descript subjects that had nothing to do with helping orientation
towards a business degree. I have objected to such things as Marketing,
Organizational Theory, Entrepreneurship, and Business Behavior Ethics as a
major courses to graduate. Most are worthless time spenders while neglecting
Accounting, Finance, Statistics, and Math followed by actual Case Studies
for the business oriented student. As a matter of fact, these four areas of
concentration would be sufficient to propell the motivated student to doing
what those other worthless courses try to do by waisting students time. Most
of these business courses are junk courses, dreamed up by incompetent
professors trying to enhance their own retention on some faculty.
Business Schools need an overhaul.
Too many economists have become more lobbyists than scientists. I have long
argued for certification exams in economics and other fields. Along the
lines of the CPA CFA and actuarial exams that have a high flunk rate. Too
many graduates did not learn much in college or high school and cannot
perform as adults. That is why I lost interest in college teaching -- I
can do it but it is counterproductive to spend a lot of time and money to
issue degrees to the uneducated. Many writers such as Charles Murray agree
and have put forward proposals to reform the system. I would add US
government should not provide any loans or support to non-certified
education.
http://economiclogic.blogspot.com/2008/08/should-economists-be-certified.htmlShould Economists be certified?
The Wall Street Journal had yesterday an op-ed on the fact that a college
degree often does not constitute proof of competency. As I have argued
before, many students have no business being in college, but the latter
graduate them anyway. This waters down the quality signal of a college
degree. The response to this situation by various trades has been to certify
themselves the competences of prospective tradespeople. Examples are the bar
exam, CPA, CFA, actuarial exams, etc. Should the same apply to Economics?
In most US colleges, an Economics major has only two years of study in that
field, hardly worth claiming to be an economist. To make matters worse, many
Economics programs feed on the rejects from business schools, who typically
failed out because of low grades in basic Mathematics and Statistics. Hardly
the best clientele for an Economics degree. While Economics programs
typically dismiss more students than most other programs, they still
graduate many that do not have required competences. A test like the GRE
subject test would have been a good start, but this has been cancelled in
2001. The American Economic Association has been thinking about devising
some criteria to be voluntarily applied to college curricula, but I think
something much more drastic would be needed.
Charles Murray Rethinking the BA
Charles Murray suggests directing most undergraduate study toward
certification rather than degrees. Many people, though they have degrees,
don't know anything close to what they should know in their field. I think
very highly of Charles Murray. He's brilliant and bold. What the BA offers
that certification cannot provide, among other things, is training in
writing and speaking. But many colleges have given up on this. What I like
about this proposal is that it would challenge the complacency of the
college industry in the same way that school vouchers challenge the
complacency of the government school system.
For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time
By CHARLES MURRAY
The Wall Street Journal August 13, 2008; Page A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858688764535107.html Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were
a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your
colleagues submits this proposal:
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which
will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will
attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has
been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess
adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a
lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone
who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."
You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But
that's the system we have in place.
Finding a better way should be easy. The BA acquired its current inflated
status by accident. Advanced skills for people with brains really did get
more valuable over the course of the 20th century, but the acquisition of
those skills got conflated with the existing system of colleges, which had
evolved the BA for completely different purposes.
Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a
> bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a
> certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance.