Business schools adapt, emphasize responsibility

---

Tweet

Along with Wall Street executives and employees, the business schools that trained them are now under fire for their failure to avert a near-collapse of the economy.

Instead of feeling burned, however, schools are using the recent meltdown as an example to teach students to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

“Business schools are listed among those entities that created this problem and business schools know that they must now be part of the solution, whether they were really part of the problem or really not,” said Douglas Viehland, executive director of the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs, or ACBSP, based in Overland Park, Kan.

ACBSP is one of the national associations that accredits business schools.

Karyll Shaw, executive director of the MBA program at MSU, said the business college is always adapting curriculum to teach students.

“Through the ’80s and ’90s, there was such an emphasis on increasing shareholder wealth without thinking about the impact of short-range things,” Shaw said. “Today we talk about being responsible and about the long term and sustainability.”

Shaw said although no new classes about the current economy have been added, professors are integrating the topic into their courses.

“Whether it’s MBAs or undergrads, it takes over a year to put a class in place,” she said. “We, like most colleges, have flexibility that we can use for current topics. We definitely have those classes that have been highly focused on those topics like a finance speaker series where we bring in top executives that’s critical way we can address it fast.”

Ted Fee, an associate professor of finance, said keeping students from placing too much trust in mathematical models and not understanding the limitations of financial tools is one of the biggest challenges for business schools.

“If you trust financial models too much, things can go wrong,” Fee said. “Companies had these sophisticated models and so people believed they must be true.

“Just because things have a lot of math and look fancy doesn’t mean they’re true. You have to question models and not just believe a computer program.”

One method the Eli Broad College of Business uses gives a group of top students a crash course in managing millions of dollars. The students manage the portfolio, which is owned by the MSU Foundation, and report to a governing board, Shaw said.

Students in the MBA program also are required to take an ethics class.

“That course is really focusing on what’s going on — it’s not just the economics, but how we got here,” she said. “It was questionable decision making on the part of the executives, what’s going on and what has to change so this never happens again, the personal and business ethic behind the decisions is a big focus.”

Dan LeClair, vice president and chief knowledge officer of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, said the impact financial troubles will have on business education is still undetermined.

“Generally business schools, the faculty and students tend to track and adapt the curriculum and learning to what’s happening in the environment,” LeClair said. “The extent to which current events will create new cases and courses but rather the question is what extent will it change the core orientation of business schools and that remains to be seen.”

AACSB is the association that accredits the Eli Broad College of Business.

Marketing senior Zakk Roberts said there was more focus on the economic situation in his classes last semester. Roberts said one of his concerns is finding a job after college.

“Companies are cutting costs right now and so they’re firing people,” Roberts said. “One thing (the college) could do is prepare us better to showcase our value. Since we’re graduating, we need to know how we can make them money so it’s worth hiring us.”

---