Universities Weblog

(Source: Harvard Business School)Do top business schools pander to the rankings in magazines such as U.S. News and Business Week? Sure they do. But what are the consequences?

A few professors think they've figured that out, according to a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education. A snippet:

In the paper, "What's Really Wrong With U.S. Business Schools?," the scholars argue that a focus on rankings, like those published in Business Week, divert resources from research and other academic areas in favor of quick fixes for M.B.A programs. [....]

Rankings threaten the role of business schools by causing administrators to constantly modify the curriculum, diverting resources from student learning and faculty research. That habit leads to fragmented M.B.A. programs, a situation the paper compares to a "speed-dating event."

An overrreliance on rankings also distorts the M.B.A. curriculum, it says, and leads to poorer quality in programs for undergraduates, other graduate students, and Ph.D. candidates.

You can find the paper online here. For an appetizer, try the abstract:

U.S. business schools are locked in a dysfunctional competition for media rankings that diverts resources from long-term knowledge creation, which earned them global pre-eminence, into short-term strategies aimed at improving their rankings. MBA curricula are distorted by "quick fix, look good" packaging changes designed to influence rankings criteria, at the expense of giving students a rigorous, conceptual framework that will serve them well over their entire careers. Research, undergraduate education, and Ph.D. programs suffer as faculty time is diverted to almost continuous MBA curriculum changes, strategic planning exercises, and public relations efforts. Unless they wake up to the dangers of dysfunctional rankings competition, U.S. business schools are destined to lose their dominant global position and become a classic case study of how myopic decision-making begets institutional mediocrity.

Once again, we're reminded that rankings are the tail wagging the dog.

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