Business schools: Cash cows or contributors to economic growth?
Their image may be that of capitalist tools, but business schools insist they make a significant contribution to social and economic development
Cash cows or contributors to economic growth? Agents of positive change or perpetuators of outmoded ideas? Business schools have no doubt that they’re forces for good, but not everyone agrees. A recent article in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper proposed that business schools everywhere be bulldozed. "There are 13,000 business schools around the world," it said. "That’s 13,000 too many." The author, Bristol University management professor Martin Parker, says schools are so intent on earning revenue that they provide corporate clients and students with what they want, rather than what they need. They persist with comfortable, tried-and-tested teaching matter and methods, as if the modern business world has not changed from decades ago. Furthermore, they teach the old "me-first" model of capitalism. Parker writes that business schools are "places that teach people how to get money out of the pockets of ordinary people and keep it for themselves". Predictably, the article has earned sc...
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