Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.bonus From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: bonus Mon, Apr 20 1992 Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 05:42:18 EDT Message-ID: 04-20 0000 BONUS: Business schools trying to adapt USA TODAY Update April 20, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network As corporate America has undergone a wrenching restructuring and a sea change in attitude toward global competition, many of the USA's business schools - and their professors - have been left behind. Seen as stodgy bastions of outmoded management theory, business schools have been criticized as educational factories churning out MBA clones more interested in doing financial deals than manufacturing high-quality products. ARE BUSINESS SCHOOLS DOING ANYTHING TO CHANGE THIS IMAGE? Now, faced with declining enrollments and slumping interest in business degrees, the schools are trying to upgrade the quality of what they teach, how they teach it and who teaches it. They're implementing quality-improvement programs among faculty. They're experimenting with team teaching, linking professors in business, liberal arts and humanities. And they're radically overhauling curriculum to keep up with corporate America. WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE OF THIS CHANGE IN DIRECTION? According to a USA TODAY survey of 243 deans of business schools and top administrators, 36% have revamped one-quarter of their curricula in the last five years, and 6% have totally new curricula. "Not only must American business change, but the faculty-teaching business has to change," says Linda Fletcher, dean of the school of business administration at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. But if change is tough in the halls of corporate America, it's mind-boggling within the ivy-covered walls of academia. WHAT PROBLEMS ARE DEANS ENCOUNTERING? "My Plato philosopher can't comprehend why she's being asked to change," says Thomas Murrin, dean of Duquesne University's A.J. Palumbo School of Business Administration. "She says she has 2,500 years of tradition to carry on." To find out what business schools are doing, USA TODAY invited 10 deans - three of whom are former corporate executives - to the newspaper's Arlington, Va., headquarters for a round table and surveyed deans meeting in Washington, D.C., with the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. WHAT DID THE DEANS SAY? While the deans say their programs are good - 61% gave themselves a "B" - they are also realistic. Of those surveyed, 73% said the value of an MBA has been downgraded by business in the last five years, in part because graduates are seen as too narrowly focused. "The three most important issues for (corporate) management are global competition, management of technology and diversity of the workforce," says Richard Lewis, dean at Michigan State University. ARE SCHOOLS DOING ANYTHING TO ADDRESS THOSE ISSUES? As a result, by far the biggest addition to business-school curriculum has been classes in international business. In the past five years, 78% have added the classes, 58% have added ethics, 47% have added quality and 21% managing diversity. In fact, the deans say the fastest-growing speciality for their students is international business. ARE ANY OTHER AREAS RECEIVING NEW FOCUS? Beyond specific courses, business schools are trying to figure out how to prepare students for a brave new world where the workforce will be made up of men, women and minorities of all kinds, where competition will be global, not local, where quality and teamwork - not top-down management - will be key. "We're not teaching how to manage human resources as well as technology," says Sidney Harris, dean at Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management Center in Claremont, Calif. Deans are making changes in a number of ways. WHAT ARE THEY DOING? At the University of California at Berkeley and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., teams of students are put together specifically on the basis of race and sex so they can learn to work together. "We no longer have a white majority" at the university, says William Hasler, dean of the Haas School of Business, who is former vice chairman of KPMG Peat Marwick. "This is the future." At Cornell's graduate school, students from outside the USA make up 25% of the MBA student body of 500. Alan Merten, dean of Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, says, "We can assemble these students, but our challenge is to make them work together." WHAT OTHER CHANGES HAVE DEANS INSTITUTED? At Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, faculty members go on sabbaticals to work in government or industry. "It's to prove to each group that they aren't bastards," Murrin says, laughing. Also, faculty are going on sabbaticals overseas. "How can they talk knowledgeably about Germany and Japan when they've never been there?" says Murrin, who spent 36 years as an executive at Westinghouse Electric. Murrin is also hiring former company executives to teach courses. WHAT ABOUT TANGIBLE WORK EXPERIENCE? At the University of Michigan, a program begun in March has adopted the medical-school model of on-the-job training. Now, 139 MBA students are working full-time for a quarter at one of 20 companies, including Motorola, 3M, Digital Equipment and Chrysler. One of the most pointed criticisms of business schools has been the emphasis on learning financial management - how to do a deal - and not how to integrate manufacturing, marketing, technology and workers into one cohesive unit. IS ANYTHING BEING DONE TO RECTIFY THAT SITUATION? Business schools "abandoned manufacturing 10 years ago, but we've come a long way back," says Merten. And while companies talk about wanting more manufacturing expertise, they aren't hiring. Only 9% say manufacturing is the fastest-growing specialty for their students. "On Monday, we had a CEO come in to talk to students, and he talked about manufacturing and how important it was," says Merten. "On Tuesday, his company was recruiting on campus for MBAs in eight areas - not one was manufacturing." ARE THERE ANY POSITIVES FOR BUSINESS SCHOOLS? Despite the faults, foreign students continue to flock to the USA's business schools, considered the best in the world. Nearly 30% of the deans surveyed say 6% to 10% of their students are foreign, and 51% say that is a little higher or much higher than five years ago. So many foreign students come, in fact, that Merten often has to defend himself against people who say, " `Stop training the enemy,' " he says. "Is 30% foreign students too much? Is 50%? Is there a point where we should have a quota?" WHY DO FOREIGN STUDENTS COME HERE TO LEARN? And while management schools in the USA are changing to adapt to new management theories, schools shouldn't forget the main reason foreign students come here, says David Blake, dean of the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. "I hope the pendulum doesn't swing too far. It would be a grave error if we forget that what we provide is a rigorous, demanding business education in management." Bonus Editor: William Snoddy. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. 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