It's Time For Radical Change In Business Education

Leadership

Business schools are among those responsible for the lack of ethics that led to the current crisis--and they must refocus their curricula.
Ever since the Enron debacle, business schools across the nation have been trying to incorporate ethics into their programs more effectively at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, through a variety of improvements.
Well, we've now learned something: It hasn't worked. Today's economic crisis underscores the fact that although American business and business education have symbiotically thrived over the past century, their relationship is fundamentally flawed. Superficial improvements to business school programs, although genuinely well-meaning, are no longer enough. Radical change--in the form of reinventing, reframing and rebuilding the education of our future business leaders--is now necessary.
As we recognize our role in the deterioration of business institutions on Wall Street, on Main Street and in Detroit, we must ask ourselves: How could we have done a better job of preparing our students? And, more important: Where do we go from here?
Although we can't serve as parents, instilling foundational value systems into our young people through their coursework, we can broaden their perspectives and positively influence their behavior over the long term. Doing this within business curricula requires a highly integrated, creative and agile approach. It requires us to provide our students with a holistic understanding of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, within the context of global business and society.
Most American business curricula were built on an educational model that grew up in the 1950s. This model divides learning into disparate functional areas and, more recently, combines them with overarching soft skills like communication and teamwork. It's an approach that was acceptable in a U.S.-centric manufacturing economy, but it's no longer appropriate. The enormity of the challenges our young people now face--the financial crisis, intractable geopolitical and environmental problems, a knowledge-and-experience economy that changes every day and technology that changes every minute--obligate us to provide a very different educational experience.
As part of the new approach we've adopted at the Villanova School of Business in an effort to meet this obligation, we've reinvented the undergraduate curriculum. We have a new team-taught, year-long, flagship course, Business Dynamics, that teaches first-year students about the overarching purpose of business within society. The rationale is simple: Once students understand the big picture of business and its effect on the welfare of people worldwide--and they start to view every challenge and question in that context--they are on the right track. Then the functional knowledge they gain not only makes more sense, it serves a larger purpose. They begin to understand that they can't sell out the long-term public good for short-term profit.
There are three things to bear in mind when considering this entrepreneurial approach. First, there is no evidence yet to suggest that Villanova is doing this right, or that this is the particular avenue that other business schools should take. We introduced the new curriculum in the fall of 2008, and we will track our students' learning experiences and outcomes. We plan to openly share the good, the bad and the unknown as we proceed. But one thing is certain: It's a thoughtfully planned, dramatic change at a time when such change is needed. And we are optimistic.

by: James Danko, Forbes.com