Special report: trends & trendsetters: there have been interesting twists and turns for graduate ed in recent years: a move away from business degrees and a dramatic drop in Ph.D.s, to name two. Maybe that's why graduate ed administrators have gotten so darn creative - Graduate Education

University Business, March, 2004 by Tim Goral

The graduate education expansion continues as more adults nationwide see a graduate degree as a prerequisite to a better job, and as more and more graduate schools provide the lifeblood of institutional research. Perhaps no other sector of higher education is so closely scrutinized for the quality of its end product. It follows, therefore, that graduate schools are more focused than ever on their competitive edge. Yet, how have business, social, regional, and economic pressures helped to forge competitive trends in graduate education in recent years? Which graduate schools are the trailblazers for tomorrow's leaders? University Business reports.

A Question of Ethics

Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Global Crossing ... the list of corporate scandals seems to be open-ended. Such indignities have dominated headlines in recent years, leading the public to wonder "what they didn't teach at Harvard Business School" (MA). The good news is that Harvard--along with the Columbia University School of Business (NY), the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management (IL), the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and others--has added a core ethics course to its curriculum.

"Everyone now asks whether this is just a fad or something that ultimately will be integrated throughout the curriculum," says Linda Livingstone, dean of the Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business (CA). "Certainly, as the corporate scandals have gotten so much media attention, there has been a tot of self-examination and external examination of business schools to ask, 'Are we doing enough to prepare people to go out into the business world and deal with the kinds of dilemmas they will face?'"

Livingstone says there is an ongoing debate over whether business schools should theme ethics throughout the curriculum of make the study of ethics the focus of a specific class.

"We do a bit of both," she says. "In all of our courses, we want our faculty to be talking about ethical issues that might arise, but we also have more specific experiences."

One of those experiences might be considered the business school equivalent of a "scared straight" program. Student executives participate in weekend "tribunals" in a courtroom setting, coordinated by the law faculty. The students hear from law officers and judges who have had white-collar criminals before them, as well as white-collar criminals who have been convicted and have served their time.

"It really opens their eyes," says Livingstone. "The students begin to realize that many of these white-collar criminals were at a place within their organizations similar to where the students are. It's interesting for executives to hear how other executives made the wrong decisions and went down the wrong path."

How effective is the program? Livingstone says that, often, within a couple weeks of the sessions, a number of students decide they need to move to a new job or leave their company because they see things within their organizations that took too much like what they heard described by the white-collar criminals. "Our students tell us that they want to work for companies with a strong ethical foundation, and want to make the right decisions in their work. That goes against the image of business school students who ate only looking for the highest-paid job and the quickest advancement."

Is There a Doctor in the House?

As if ethical questions don't pose a big enough problem, business schools are faced with another looming crisis: the increasing shortage of qualified doctoral faculty.

"That poses a significant challenge as you try to hire qualified faculty that can do excellent work in the classroom and also high-level scholarly work," says Pepperdine's Livingstone. "The pool is shrinking, yet is being spread more broadly as education becomes more internationatized."

One reason for the shortage, she suggests, is that when the economy was robust, it was more lucrative to go out and work in the business world. "It's also very demanding to get a Ph.D.," adds Livingstone. "It takes a number of years to complete, and there is a tremendous number of people who start Ph.D.s and never finish. It's certainly not an issue that will be quickly resolved; it's going to take the work of a tot of people to address the issue over a long period of time."

A report issued last fall by the Doctoral Faculty Commission (DFC), a committee of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (www.aacsb.edu), indicates that if the trend is not reversed, the shortage of business Ph.D.s will reach crisis levels. The report, "Sustaining Scholarship in Business Schools" (online at www.aacsb.edu/publications/dfc), says that in the U.S., business doctorates declined from 1,327 in 1994-95 to 1,071 in 1999-2000, or by more than 19 percent. The percentage of doctorates produced by AACSB-accredited institutions also has decreased, to 84 percent in 1999-2000 from 92 percent a decade earlier. "Today, the number of doctorates produced by accredited schools is at its lowest level since 1987," reads the report. "Although there are some examples of new programs and marginal increases in enrollment in various parts of the world, local demand has outstripped supply in virtually all countries."