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discipline, it partly came at the cost of
relevance. And perhaps the last nail was
hammered into the relevance coffin by the
obsession that business schools have had
with the yearly Ivy League rankings that
are designed to identify the world’s best
business schools. The last two decades
of the 20th century saw business school
rankings became equivalent to league
tables in sports. Business schools that
didn’t make the rankings, or performed
poorly, experienced a loss of reputation
that subsequently had a downside effect
on enrolments, research funding and
endowments. As rankings were largely
research-based, with preference given
to publications in high-quality, often
narrow and esoteric journals, the focus
on rigour over relevance accelerated
and became even more exaggerated.
Although North American business
schools have a century of rich history,
business education in Australia is a much
more recent phenomenon. Most business
schools were previously variations of
faculties of commerce and economics,
and were created largely to educate
accountants and to some degree develop
managers and leaders. But there was
another reason for their existence, which
was to fund research at most universities.
As the direct cost of research is not fully
funded by the Australian government,
business schools have often been viewed
as cash cows, playing an important role
in subsidising the cost of research. In
Australia, most, if not all, business schools
are heavily taxed to help fund research.
The research funding imperative
also forced Australian business schools
to look overseas to attract and recruit
full-fee-paying students to help fund
teaching and research-related activities.
This business model has served business
schools and universities very well for the
last three decades. But that was yesterday.
Today, business schools are confronted
with a changing environment that is
forcing them to rethink how they teach,
do research and engage with the external
community. For centuries, universities have
primarily concerned themselves with the
creation and dissemination of knowledge.
However, the ineffectiveness of financial
and political institutions, for example,
has forced modern-day universities to
rethink their purpose. The focus cannot
only be on knowledge creation, it has to
be on the use of knowledge. Universities
cannot be content to create knowledge,
they should also be harbingers of the
change they wish their ideas to bring
about – that is, universities now have
to be their own agents of change by
being more involved in their community
and actively playing the role of the
conscience of both industry and society.
A second challenge that confronts
business schools is that their main
business is in danger of being disrupted,
particularly in the postgraduate space,
unless they are prepared to dramatically
change their modes of delivery and
business model to cater to this market.
Internationally, leading business schools
are using technology to target new
segments and markets, thereby increasing
their global footprint. Most popular
MOOCS and mini-master's globally are
offered by leading business schools like
Harvard (HBX), Wharton and Stanford,
while both MIT and Yale through their
respective open courseware platforms
have an ambitious target of educating
one billion people over the next five
years by making their courses available
online and free to students globally.
Current trends show that the uptake of
these courses is highest in Asia, particularly
in countries like India and China, which
are key markets supplying international
students to Australian business schools.
Third, while the government’s current
focus is on university engagement with
industry, the use of very restricted metrics
(essentially non-federally funded research
grants) to measure engagement, which
will subsequently impact research block
grants, will require universities to rethink
their engagement strategies.
Together, these challenges will force
business schools to operate differently
in the future.
So what should a future business
school look like?
For business schools to be more
effective, the research and teaching
nexus has to be more integrated and the
dichotomy of rigour and relevance has
to be resolved. While the last decade
has seen numerous innovations in
content delivery, the same cannot be
said about the content itself, which to a
large extent has stayed the same. The
relative importance of the three pillars of
teaching, research and engagement will
need to change. Business schools will be
expected to be much more porous and
inclusive in relation to engagement with
the external stakeholders than previously.
Engagement with external stakeholders
and industry partners will be paramount.
Reaching out to external stakeholders
is only one part of the solution, however.
Providing immersive learning and teaching
experiences for both staff and students is
equally important. Allowing staff to spend
extended periods of time in problem-
rich environments will enable them to
stay close to end-users and go a long
way to ensure research relevance.
The inherent multidisciplinarity
of real-world problems will force
academics from different areas to
collaborate, requiring them to step
into the intersection of disciplines.
Rather than research-led teaching,
Business schools are
confronted with a changing
environment that is forcing them
to rethink how they teach, do
research and engage with the
external community.
research will have to be embedded in
and integrated into the curriculum.
Not only will the new knowledge
created through such collaborative
research be relevant to industry and
society, much more importantly, it will
be a source of competitive advantage for
universities, as this knowledge will only
be available through these sites of higher
learning with face-to-face experiential
learning environments as an important
value add. It will also allow students
to be exposed to the best researchers
or creators of new knowledge in the
business schools, and in turn become
knowledge creators of their own.
Business education is at a crossroads.
A seismic change of a similar magnitude
but of a different type to that of the 1950s
is being experienced by them again,
requiring a rethink of how they operate
into the future. Engagement will be at its
core and business schools that ignore
engagement will do so at their peril. n
Ashish Sinha is a professor of
marketing and associate dean
(research) at UTS Business School.
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