Universities Weblog

Should universities put a thumb on the scale for poor students? Yes, they should, say some higher education critics.

It's no surprise that kids from the lower socioeconomic rungs don't populate elite colleges in great numbers. But that's particularly true for poorer white kids, who don't benefit from affirmative action, traditionally designed to promote racial equality. Couple that with the trend among institutions to raise academic profiles (and chase U.S. News rankings) by offering merit aid to students with high SAT scores and better grades, who most often come from affluent families, and you get a system that's squeezing out the white middle class and below. Even public universities are witnessing a growing affluence among their undergraduates.

So should we give an admissions boost to poorer kids who get decent grades and SAT scores? Should we give a break to the kid who has to work 20 hours a week and still can't afford a Kaplan prep course? Should we consider the disadvantages these students have to overcome?

Sure we should, but the question is whether or not schools can afford to enroll them. At some colleges, the answer is yes. Large endowments spin off lots of money for scholarships, and a few schools are able to discount tuition accordingly. But we're talking about a handful of institutions. Most can't afford to enroll as many underprivileged kids as they'd perhaps like to.

So what's a lower-class, talented kid to do? Pick a college you can afford (or that can afford you) and do well. Sounds simple, but sometimes simple works.

Yes, according to a new article in Harvard Business Review. The authors, professors at Southern Cal's business school, suggest that M.B.A. programs focus too much on theory and quantitative analysis, and hire professors interested only in pursuing research on their narrow specialties. These profs, they argue, have little or no management experience and fail to educate students about real-world situations they'll face as business leaders.

Here's a bit from the Chronicle of Higher Education's coverage:

"We cannot imagine a professor of surgery who has never seen a patient or a piano teacher who doesn't play the instrument, and yet today's business schools are packed with intelligent, highly skilled faculty with little or no managerial experience," the two professors write. "As a result, they can't identify the most important problems facing executives and don't know how to analyze the indirect and long-term implications of complex business decisions."

Most business problems cannot be solved neatly by applying hypothetical models or formulas, they say. "When applied to business—essentially a human activity in which judgments are made with messy, incomplete, and incoherent data—statistical and methodological wizardry can blind rather than illuminate."The authors also recommend that business schools model their curricula on that of law and medical schools, and treat their discipline as a profession, not an academic department. But is management a profession, a discipline, a vocation, or all of the above? Does it represent a uniform body of knowledge like law and medicine, or math and biology? Can B-schools (at least many of the leading ones) step away from their emphasis on research and focus instead on the "softer" aspects of leadership such as ethics and communication skills?

What do you think?

For insiders' perspectives on MBA admissions, check out this BusinessWeek online feature. You'll find Q&A sessions with representatives from leading business schools throughout the U.S. and abroad, all offering tips on how to navigate the application process and impress admissions committees. Some of the content is restricted to paying subscribers, but you can glean plenty for free.

Looking for online degree options but can't make sense of what's available? Here's your answer: Online College Center, a one-stop shop for distance learning and career advancement.

Whether you're a recent high school grad, a college student wanting a more flexible program or a working adult hoping to study part-time at your convenience, you'll find dozens of options for degrees at all levels—associate's, bachelor's, master's and professional certificates. You can search by field of study, such as healthcare management, business, Criminal justice, IT and education, and discover various kinds of financial aid for which you might qualify. Also, be sure to check out their online learning FAQs and read about what the future holds for today's hottest professions.

Still unsure about what you want to be when you grow up? Get a taste of various careers with the Center's "day in the life" snapshots. Want to know what a Java developer's day entails? What about an e-business purchasing manager? Or a marketing product manager?

Find your own future at Online College Center.

(Source: Bates College)Bates College is higher education's "best value," according to the new Princeton Review rankings. The total annual cost for this Maine liberal arts college runs about $40,000. So where's the value?

According to a story in the Boston Globe, the college offers a particularly generous financial aid package. On average, freshmen receive over $20,000 in grants, not including Student Loans.

(Source: University of Pennsylvania)Those clever Quakers are at it again. Every year, student journalists at The Daily Pennsylvanian (I was one myself) concoct crazy—but marginally believable—stories for an April Fool's issue. Of course, they never publish the paper on April 1; that would be too obvious. Instead, the issue often appears later in the month, and usually catches some people off guard.

The latest case is no exception. On April 12, students ran the joke issue featuring a lead story suggesting that President Amy Gutmann, on the job for less than a year, had received a vote of no confidence from the faculty. That's a sensitive issue these days because of similar (and real) actions at Harvard. Well, a news service called Academic Impressions picked up the story and sent it to folks who subscribe to its daily headline feed. Shocked by the news, I read the story and realized fairly early on that it was a ruse. Here's what it said:

Less than a year into Amy Gutmann's tenure as Penn president, faculty members have decided they no longer support the University's top administrator.

"I stand by the Penn Compact and look forward to a productive dialogue about the University's future," Gutmann said in a statement. "But I can't believe they're doing this to me just after it happened to Larry [Summers]. I'm so much cuter … and skinnier."Right about then I'd figured out the hoax. Cuter and skinnier? Come on. You'd think the folks at Academic Impressions would have been more careful in vetting this piece, especially because it came from a student-run paper. What's more, the paper's editorial alerts readers to the nature of the issue. Within an hour or so, the news service issued a retraction, admitting it had been duped. I assume it'll be more careful in the future.

With competition for admission to top colleges increasingly intense, many students are turning their attention to schools that just seem to fit well. Can't get into an Ivy? No big deal. Just find an institution offering the curriculum you need, the atmosphere you want, and the location you prefer. It'll probably be cheaper, too.

So as envelopes both thick and thin continue to arrive in your mailbox, don't fret over rejection. Find the best fit—however you may define that—and go.

Are blogs simply a fad? Not according to a few Wharton professors who study their impact and potential. Check this out:

Will bloggers upend the mainstream media? What legal protections should bloggers have? Is there a blogger business model? While no definitive answers exist just yet, experts at Wharton advise questioners to be patient. Blogging, they note, will be around for a long time.

The growth rate of blogs is impressive. Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, tracked more than 8 million online diaries as of March 21, up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour. "At its most basic level, it's a technology that is lowering the cost of publishing' and turning out to be "the next extension of the Web," says Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach. "Blogging is still in its early days. It's analogous to where the Web was in 1995 and 1996. It's not clear how it will turn out."Continue here.

U.S. News and World Report has released its 2006 rankings of graduate and professional schools. Here are some highlights:

Business Schools1. Harvard
2. Penn (Wharton), Stanford—tie
3. MIT (Sloan)
4. Northwestern (Kellogg)

Law Schools1. Yale
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. NYU

Medical Schools1. Harvard
2. Johns Hopkins
3. Washington U.
4. Penn
5. UC-San Francisco

engineering Schools1. MIT
2. Stanford
3. UC-Berkeley
4. Georgia Tech, Illinois—tie

Education Schools1. Harvard
2. UCLA
3. Stanford
4. Columbia (Teachers College)
5. Vanderbilt (Peabody)

Facing mounting criticism and a vote of no confidence from his own faculty, Harvard president Larry Summers announced his resignation today before a stunned crowd in Massachusetts Hall.

"I believe it's time for me to pursue new challenges and to let Harvard seek new leadership," said Summers, who will remain as president through June. "It has become increasingly clear to me that I no longer enjoy the faith and trust of the many constituencies the university serves."

Summers' tenure at Harvard has been fraught with controversy from the start. With his abrasive and combative demeanor, he's managed to offend nearly everyone. His famous battles with Cornel West, the professor of African-American studies who left in protest for Princeton, made headlines and exposed Summers as a diplomatic train wreck. More recently, Summers came under fire for suggesting that women lack sufficient mental prowess to lead successful careers in science and engineering. Not surprisingly, women's groups around the world excoriated Summers for his unsubstantiated remarks.

"I Apologize to the many groups and individuals I may have offended," Summers said. "I certainly meant no harm or disrespect. And I appreciate those supporters who have defended me over the years and especially during these past few difficult months."

Summers declined to speculate about his future, but hinted at a return to government. Before coming to Harvard, Summers served as Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton.

"I seem to fit in better in that milieu," Summers said with a tinge of bitterness. "Skins tend to be a bit thicker."

Harvard's plans to move some of its academic programs and facilities to Allston may be put on hold while the university searches for new leadership. And its purported $3-4 billion capital campaign will no doubt be held in abeyance until a successor has come aboard.

In the meantime, Harvard will need to repair its public image, which has taken a flogging thanks to Summers' social gaffes. Let's hope the next leader of the World's Greatest University will tread more lightly.