Who trains the leaders of our society? The decision makers, those whose ideas mean happiness or misery for millions? Historically, this would have been the ancient Greeks and Romans, via the classical education that was once de riguer for any learned man. To be able to dispute a subject in Latin was an early measure of competence for politicians, priests, doctors and lawyers – and was the primary means of university-level assessment for hundreds of years.
But assessment practices, and society, move on. These days our lives are more effected by a managerial class who are more likely to have a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) than a grounding in Plutarch and Pliny. And, as one of the leaders of a recent conference noted: ”
As a result of the financial crisis, business schools have had an image problem. Society has the feeling we have failed them.
The MBA and other related qualification are delivered by the Business School, which was described by one speaker at a recent event for business school Deans as “the most successful educational innovation of the 20th century”. I was at the event to talk about an unlikely contender for the most successful educational innovation of the 21st century, the MOOC.
My respect for Deans of business schools rose sharply over the two-day event, as I saw just how exercised and engaged business school leaders are with the character of their graduates. I knew that “social entrepreneurship” had long been a management sub-discipline, but I was surprised to see how deeply these ideas of a social benefit to business had been embedded even in more mainstream courses.
Alas, this sort of stuff is less measurable than the traditional “salary premium” scales that have traditionally been used to pit one school against each other. (Just as a passing note, the salary premium offered by an MBA has doubled since 2009 according to one delegate). There are initiatives in development, including one supported by major accreditation body EFMD, that are looking to develop ways of understanding these more subtle impacts. And the majority of the event, an invite-only global meeting for Deans and similar school leaders, was focused on aspects of outreach and adding value to wider society.
Being at the interface between academia and the commercial world, Deans were best placed to see where academic practice could be useful. And nearly all were in agreement that the capacity for slow, considered, thought and a focus on the wider implications of business activity was something that research and scholarship could usefully bring to the table.
However, another key question (posed in the closing session) was:
What are business schools and academia doing to themselves?
A lot of people in my corner of the academic internet have been lamenting the “commercialisation” of university management practice – but somehow hearing it from people who research and teach around management practice more generally really hit home. The need to focus on preparing graduates for a radically different future is a concern that links executive education to Dark Mountain.
In parallel, thinking about the changing face of business was characterised by an emphasis on the resurgence of politics – the increased willingness of the state to step in to regulate and manage markets. How much of this strand of thinking was driving the emphasis on the social good was unclear – my guess is that the two themes were largely separate… I never thought I’d have occasion to accuse the Dean of a very prominent school of socialism, and I was surprised to see so many ideas I would have characterised as very “radical lefty” put forward without apology. Many schools have a focus on student voluntary work, generally in supporting local businesses, charities and other social enterprises pro bono with student expertise.
A concern around the increasing intervention of politics prompted two UK business school deans to tell me that their primary worry for the next two years was a potential change of government funding policy – with a clear acceptance that the current model had failed and was failing.
A range of industry CEO keynotes was also focused on social good, with executives from heavy engineering concerns lining up to talk about supporting, effectively, social enterprise and education around the world. Another take-away from me was the trend for larger companies to in-source – to take unrelated business areas like estate management and IT services in house to drive up efficiency.
In talking about MOOCs I was left to concentrate on business models – the flaws in the current crop of platform offers, the current low financial and reputational benefit offered to an individual school within an institution, the start-up rather than publishing or educational nature of the path to value realisation were as clear to me as they were to the delegates. Talking authoritatively about business models to a room full of people who research and teach them every day was nerve-wracking, to say the least.
But there was an enormous appetite to showcase the quality and expertise of business school staff, and to allow schools to build on the work of others online; an appetite that was filled, incongruously, by the re-emergence of the plainer elder sister of the MOOC, Open Educational Resources. Both myself and the legend that is Paul Stacey (another invited speaker, focusing on MOOC pedagogy) were surprised by how animated delegates were by the ideals and original benefits of OER.
I closed my session with my usual lament about the state of EdTech journalism – itself made poignant by an earlier speaker claiming that “Schools of journalism are dead”. I got the impression that it was very senior institutional leaders that were signing up to the big platforms, and that they were not acting on accurate product information. When the book on the MOOC comes to be written – probably by Audrey Watters – my suspicion is it will be seen as an early indicator of the failure of journalism rather than as a triumph of educational innovation.
(A hearty salute to Paul via the Canadian National Anthem)
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