One senior accounting major at Radford, who asked not to be named so as not to damage his job prospects, says he goes to class only to take tests or give presentations. “A lot of classes I’ve been exposed to, you just go to class and they do the PowerPoint from the book,” he says. “It just seems kind of pointless to go when (a) you’re probably not going to be paying much attention anyway and (b) it would probably be worth more of your time just to sit with your book and read it.”
We all know the drill, the way students can get through four years of college without doing or learning much of anything. There’s good old PowerPoint in the classroom, of course, keeping them absent forever. Lots of things to say in favor of technology (laptops in class) in this regard.
But there are also certain majors — the ones the big-time athletes get directed toward — that create perfect non-learning conditions. Business, as this New York Times piece suggests, is among the best. Moronic group projects galore, almost no writing required… And, above all, no body of knowledge. What is business? I mean, as an academic subject? What is journalism? If there’s no body of knowledge, there’s nothing to teach. What you teach is a way of doing stuff, a way of being with other people doing that stuff. These are vocational majors, not academic majors.
Henry Mintzberg, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, … is a dogged critic of traditional business programs. He says it is a “travesty” to offer vocational fields like finance or marketing to 18-year-olds.
But they’re getting prepared for the job market!
And what about employers? What do they want?
According to national surveys, they want to hire 22-year-olds who can write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data, and they’re perfectly happy to hire English or biology majors. Most Ivy League universities and elite liberal arts colleges, in fact, don’t even offer undergraduate business majors.
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UD thanks Dirk for the link.
April 14th, 2011 at 9:27AM
Schools of Education have done at least as much damage as business schools, although both do a fine job of keeping students away from substantive disciplines.
I suppose that it could be argued that business and education certification is more harmful than diploma mill degrees, since they appear to be more authentic. An MBA from State U sounds better than the same title from Mill U.
April 14th, 2011 at 11:27AM
Mintzberg, himself a b-school professor, makes some good points…see my post management education and the role of technique.
April 14th, 2011 at 12:10PM
Corporate managers give lots of speeches about the importance of a liberal arts education, but when they send recruiters to our midwestern R-1, they only interview business and engineering majors.
April 14th, 2011 at 2:34PM
Good point, In the provinces.
April 16th, 2011 at 9:46AM
The Career Day at my school is even segregated–technical day(business, engineering, science only) and nontechnical (all you other shlubs). I’ve complained to Career Services about it, but they claim it’s driven by the employers.
April 21st, 2011 at 8:38AM
So, it’s encouraging to see the bullshit business major called out. In the New York Times no less.
However…
“According to national surveys, they want to hire 22-year-olds who can write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data, and they’re perfectly happy to hire English or biology majors.”
What are these national surveys? Much as I would like this to be true, I don’t think this attitude is actually widespread…
July 19th, 2011 at 7:20AM
[…] that a bunch of his undergraduate business majors (background on that burnished major here and here) has plagiarized, and he called them on it. After announcing his intention to report the cheating […]