According to the article on the hyperlink below, there is little evidence to prove that an MBA from an elite school will improve your career. http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,41346,FF.html (Gert may have posted this story before)
In the article, AACSB criticized the business schools for "unhealthy obsession with their standing in magazine rankings". AACSB also said that the top-ranked business schools are "hopelessly behind the curve on information technology and are proffering out-of-touch curricula". It has to be noted that ABA has similarly criticized top-ranked law schools for being obsessed with magazine rankings.
When I read the phrase "out-of-touch curricula," I immediately though of all those full-time faculty members who are supposed to be developing the stuff, and (ahem) keeping it current. Who could be surprised, though, that they are not able to do it? Consider the following excerpt from the article that Ike so helpfully posted: The drive for academic respectability, however, has nurtured a teaching culture in which few marketing professors have managed a brand, few management professors have led a team, and few finance professors have done a deal. I would add that all this "mentorship" that professors are supposed to be conducting on campus can't possibly be happening. The ability to mentor comes from experience. Maybe the top schools should consider hiring more adjuncts to help set their curricula (as well as their students) straight.
Well then, there's a tough choice; risk AACSB accreditation by hiring those with real world experience or do nothing (i.e. "business as usual"). I'm betting they opt for the latter.
Setting basic qualifications for a job usually guarantees that the person is academically qualified. In business, other than in highly technical areas, people skills are the most important qualification along with good basic smarts. Harvard, Yale etc. grads have probably only slightly better people skills but they do often come with really good connections. I know that 20-30 years ago a large factor in getting hired by at least one major Canadian accounting firm was who your father was. Getting hired is one thing but how you progress, once hired, is for the most part up to you. I am not from a big business or academic background and the millionaires I know started with a menial job and no education and built it into a large business. All of their management skills developed outside of academics.
If I'm reading the article correctly, it appears that AACSB officials aren't so sure anymore that full-time faculty should be allowed to design curricula and teach students without the mentorship of adjuncts: The AACSB task force strongly suggested clearing the ivory-tower cobwebs out of B-schools and letting people with real-world experience design curricula and teach alongside academics. Perhaps the choice isn't as tough as it seems. It appears as though one of the AACSB's top people feels that some of the leading institutions don't place that much value in AACSB accreditation anyway, since the risk of losing such accreditation doesn't provide enough incentive to change: But Milton Blood, the AACSB's managing director of accreditation services, predicts resistance, especially at the most prestigious institutions. "They don't have the incentive to shift," he says.
If something on that order were to happen it would be one heck of a change, wouldn't it? I've only briefly glanced at the accreditation standards but my understanding is the AACSB has a penchant for full-time faculty. In fact, many schools, I believe, that might otherwise qualify for accreditation, get knocked out of the box on that issue.
Perhaps the winds of change are beginning to blow. Wouldn't it be something if AACSB accreditation eventually required schools to employ a certain amount of adjuncts for the purpose of developing curriclula and mentoring students?
