B-schools under fire - business schools - CE Roundtable - Panel Discussion

Chief Executive, The, April, 1993

Reichert: To me, education is nothing more than a mind-stretching experience. Talented people continually seek more knowledge. Giving them the opportunity to stretch their brains allows them to make a better contribution to the company. That's a low-risk investment for the company, as opposed to hiring somebody fresh out of an MBA program, who probably has been educated beyond his intelligence and doesn't have any basic business experience.

RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM

Dennis J. Keller (DeVry): We have to realize that there are over 600 graduate schools of business in the U.S., and between 300,000 and 400,000 students. This is an active market that has grown enormously. In the early 1970s, there were less than 300 schools. The number has skyrocketed because there's an interest and a need for the skills and tools. We've been talking about largely 20 to 30 programs that are generally full-time and that produce graduates who don't want to be the horses, but want to finance the horses.

However, there's a whole system of programs--550 to 600 of them--that run in the evenings. Many of them are taught by people who have academic credentials, but who also have practical experience. Often they operate a business during the day and teach at night. These programs tend to be oriented toward doing; the faculty members are practitioners.

Lauren S. Williams (NutraSweet): That's true. What's more, full-time students tend to possess an individualistic outlook: They seek individual rewards, and they are not attuned to group leadership or the formulation of a group vision.

I don't see this behavior as much with executive education program participants, probably because they have already been indoctrinated into a group culture. In addition, the program usually emphasizes the faculty's practical experience rather than research and publishing.

Herwig Langohr (INSEAD, Paris): Much of the criticism I've heard about MBAs seems to revolve around individualism, selfishness, and greed, about employees' concern for career instead of the well-being of the corporation.

Perhaps you are blaming the wrong culprit. The problem doesn't stem solely from business schools; it really originates in the U.S. educational philosophy. This philosophy is oriented toward the individual--it pushes him to excel rather than to adapt, to conform, or to socialize.

Landon H. Rowland (Kansas City Southern Industries): A French scholar taught us early in the 19th century that individualism is the hallmark of this nation's fundamental experience. In a sense, we abolished state-run centralized government economies as an alternative. It's our plight, our unfortunate future, that everybody in the world will be cursed with the same individualism, and business and organizational experience.

Wesley A. Magat (Fuqua School, Duke University): There is a tension in the business community between the need to work in teams and the need to succeed as individuals.

Let me tell you about an experiment we conducted recently. We started the year with a week-long executive program on leadership and teamwork for first-year students. As an experiment, it worked beautifully. We spent our days learning about leadership, community involvement, and personal career planning. At the end of the week, the students were all fired up.