Business students' perceptions of arrogance in academia

College Student Journal, March, 2007 by Perry Haan, Margaret M. Britt, Art Weinstein

Research Approach and Sample

A 36-item, two page survey was administered by nine faculty members to business students in their classrooms at eight colleges and universities in the United States. The multi-site approach was utilized to obtain a representative view of business students' perception of arrogance. From a total of 569 surveys administered, 513 (90%) were successfully completed by the respondents and used in the study. Three-hundred and sixty-one (361) respondents were undergraduate business students (70%) and 152 respondents were MBA students (30%).

The survey consisted of five sections: Educators (nine college occupations and elementary through high school teachers), Business Professions (six business occupations), Non-Business Professions (seven occupations), Self-Rated (five reference group items), and demographics (eight items). The first four parts were measured using five-point Likert scales (1-strongly agree to 5-strongly disagree), and the last part used typical demographic classifications. Table 1 provides a breakdown of student type; these student types were self-identified by the study's subjects. They were not given definitions of traditional and non-traditional students. Table 2 describes the other demographic data comprising the sample.

Research Findings and Discussion

RQ1 asks if business college students believe that those working in academe are more arrogant than other professions. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to compare the means of Educators to Business Professions and Non-Business Professions. The overall mean (and standard deviations) for each category were 3.23 (.979) for Educators, 2.99 (.948) for Business Professions, and 2.58 (1.126) for Non-Business Professions.

Business students' perceptions of educators are significantly different (f=14.911, p<.000) than their perceptions of the other two professional groups. Post hoc Tukey Honestly Significant Differences tests show statistically significant differences (p<.000) between Educators and each of the two other professional categories. Hence, students believe that those working in academe are less arrogant than others in other Business and Non-Business professions.

While participants in this study did not perceive educators to be arrogant, educators are concerned about being seen that way. Houston (2004) warns educators to be cautious not to cross the line between confidence and arrogance when dealing with students and colleagues. Leaders of educational institutions in particular must be careful about how they use their power. Leaders who act without the consent of colleagues can create resistance and rebellion among the followers.

In fact, in the ranking of arrogant occupations, the first six, and nine of the first ten, were outside of academe. Only College Administrators/Presidents made the top ten, coming in at number seven. Table 3 shows each of the 22 occupations probed in this study in descending order from most to least arrogant. The mean and standard deviation are presented for each occupation. (The lower the mean score, the more arrogant the participants perceived those occupations).