Business Education practical problems

It's all the fault of the timetable and textbook

By Gerard Hanlon,

Published by the Financial Times, November 2, 2009

Message to MBAs: We Are No Longer Masters of the Universe

The Globalist published October 30, 2009 above mentioned piece by Louis Hughes on the role MBAs may have played in the recent financial and economic crisis.
You may access it clicking on this link: http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=8098

MIT in Portugal

"For the MIT this is consulting. Once the money stops, so stops the agreement." Campus e Cunha dixit, referring to the agreements recently signed between the MIT and several Portuguese universities under the umbrella of the minister for Higher Education and Science.
From: http://diario.iol.pt/economia/campos-e-cunha-ex-ministro-financas/1090699-4058.html, Sept.22, 2009

The Singularity University

Two other recent articles in the Financial Times (1 & 2) called our attention to the Singularity University already introduced two posts back. Is this the way forward?

Bureaucrat U

This one is from Forbes Magazine, so you know what type of story you are getting. Some useful data are on offer though, even if some of our received opinion can be contradicted. "It is time for higher education to go on diet" seems rather an implausible lesson for Portugal at least right now, i.e. after so many years of budget cuts in the higher education sector.
The title of the story ("Pay the teachers, not the administrators") seems rather out of place if applied to Portuguese public and private universities alike. These are traditionally understaffed, or should I say "wrongstaffed" too?

A new type of university?

For what it's worth, take a look at this interesting pioneer effort to launch a new type of university in California.
From what I read there are some positives, but the whole experiment seems somewhat lunatic and lonesome! Difficult to believe they will be around by next year...

University becoming an ambiguous social factor?

"The aspirational society stalls at the gates of academe", by John Lloyd, in the FT of July 25, questions the role of the university in promoting social mobility. An extract: "...the university becomes an ambiguous social factor. The more education it confers, the better the possibility for advancement up through the classes. But it also functions as a filter: the professions, and higher earnings, are now so routinely associated with the degrees it gives that those without its benison find the career and class bonds tighter than ever."
Read on clicking on the above link and let us have your opinion on this blog as a comment.

The teachers join the students distancing themselves from the culture of greed in higher education

Soapbox: Students need to be wary of ‘greed is good’

By Kamal Munir, Financial Times, June 22, 2009

Recently, teaching a group of finance students – many of them ex-investment bankers – at Cambridge, I asked if any of them had seen Oliver Stone’s famous film about corporate greed, Wall Street.

The entire class chuckled and one girl replied with mock astonishment: “You mean how many times have we seen it?”

MBAs trying to shed the image of public enemy no.1

Following a previous initiative at Thunderbird, Arizona, some years ago, some Harvard, Massachusetts, MBA graduates have signed a oath, now extended to graduates from elsewhere, also through a dedicated website.

Apparently, the under signers and their mentors, would like to use this oath as a tool to shed the negative image that the ongoing international financial crisis, and the inherent scandals, brought upon them. More and more MBAs see their future careers more in the non-profit sector than in the banking and consulting business, so they dare "to strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide", among other similarly sounding vacuities.

Genuine idealism or opportunistic hypocrisy?

You may read some of the pieces on this story clicking on the following titles and leave your opinion as a comment in this blog.

"A Hippocratic oath for managers, Forswearing greed", The Economist, Jun 4, 2009

"Harvard's MBA Oath Goes Viral", by Anne VanderMey, Business Week, June 11, 2009

"The students who swear by a business school", by Michael Skapinker, Financial Times, June 23, 2009

Academics have more to declare than their genius

Under this title Devesh Kapur, from the University of Pennsylvania, published in yesterday's FT a comment on potential conflicts of interest by academics. He questions:
"Universities are about research and teaching – but they have also become about big money. It is a symbiotic relationship and one should have no illusions about how hard it is to do the former without the latter. Taking intellectual risks, having the freedom to research and publish on anything of one’s choice and having the right to make mistakes is the life-blood of academia. But should one not ask of academics the same standards of transparency we demand elsewhere?"
You may read the full text of his comment here and give us your feedback at this blog.

Take more of MIT / Toma lá + MIT !

If we believe this abstract, we, Portugal, are on the way to become part of the 17th or 11th largest economy in the world. Why am I not so happy, then?

"Research- and technology-intensive universities, especially via their entrepreneurial spinoffs, have a dramatic impact on the economies of the United States and its fifty states. A new report on just one such university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicates conservatively that, if the active companies founded by MIT graduates formed an independent nation, their revenues would make that nation at least the seventeenth-largest economy in the world. A less conservative direct extrapolation of the underlying survey data boosts the numbers to 25,800 currently active companies founded by MIT alumni that employ about 3.3 million people and generate annual world sales of $2 trillion, producing the equivalent of the eleventh-largest economy in the world.

These findings result from an analysis of MIT alumni-founded companies and the entrepreneurial environment that fosters this new-company creation. Conducted by Edward B. Roberts and Charles Eesley of the MIT Sloan School of Management, the report is based on a 2003 survey of all living MIT alumni, with additional detailed analyses, including verification and updating of revenue and employment figures to 2006 from records of Compustat (public companies) and Dun & Bradstreet (private companies). "

Abstract from "Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT" by EDWARD B. ROBERTS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Entrepreneurship Center, eroberts@mit.edu and CHARLES E. EESLEY, Stanford University
Email: cee@stanford.edu (free downloadable from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1352633)

The first MBA president

"Why politics isn't business as usual"

Under this title Charles R. Kesler published July 03, 2006 a story on The Los Angeles Times that might not be very flattering to MBAs and business schools, let alone to George W. Bush, the president in question.

Read on here http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/03/opinion/oe-kesler3

MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1?

Business Week May 20, 2009

Read the story clicking MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1?

The debate over business schools' culpability in the financial crisis rages on, with no clear end in sight

By Francesca Di Meglio

Portuguese universities: a long way from the market

"Universities can't be managed as public administration departments. They should be handled as public firms, knowing (beforehand) what is the contribution of the state (funds), and then having to raise their own funds. They should be able to make their own management decisions, which is not the case now. Their product price, i.e. the students fees, is fixed by (national) law. Their clients, the students, are determined (centrally) by the ministerium. As it is the quantity to be produced, i.e. the number of admitted students, and the price of their resources, i.e. how much they pay to the administrative and teaching staff. With these restrictions, which enterprise could survive in a competitive international setting? All the fundamental management aspects are determined by the ministerium. So, it's very difficult to have a long term strategy. The state (government) should give to the (higher education) institutions room to grow, management autonomy, and performance evaluation." (Excerpt of an interview with Luis Campos e Cunha, economics professor at the New University Lisbon and former minister of finance of the Portuguese government, published by the monthly business magazine Exame, nº 302, June 2009, blogger's translation)

Higher education 'market' warning

Higher education in the United States is coming to resemble any other kind of personal service industry Professor Robert Reich Click here for a transcript

Britain has been warned of the dangers of following America in the "marketisation" of higher education.

The warning came from Robert Reich, a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University and a labour secretary in President Clinton's administration.

He was describing what he called "the destruction of public higher education in America, and how the UK can avoid the same fate".

Delivering the annual Higher Education Policy Institute lecture, Prof Reich said that from the 1950s to the 70s in the US, there had been a huge increase in federal and state funding for public universities.

The future of higher education

I created this blog in order to discuss the future of higher education, not just in Portugal, where I'm located, but worldwide.

• What will universities look like in the future?
• Is academic freedom passé?
• Is there a market or several different markets of higher education?

These are some of the questions I would like to ventilate with you guys out there.