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Chat Transcript May 26, 2009, 2:27PM EST

The Future of Business School

Author Rakesh Khurana fields questions about the role of B-schools in the financial crisis, the professionalization of management, and needed reforms

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Rakesh Khurana

The economic crisis is putting the spotlight on business schools. Some critics pin the blame for the economic implosion on business school programs, citing MBAs who played key roles in the crisis. And just about everyone seems to have an opinion about it. But no one seems to know for sure what the future should look like for business schools either.

Rakesh Khurana (RakeshKhurana), Harvard Business School professor and author of From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton University Press, 2007), knows the history of the MBA better than most, and has specific ideas about what the future of the degree should look like. At a live chat on May 22, Khurana answered questions from BusinessWeek reporter Francesca Di Meglio (FrancescaBW) and the public about where business schools have gone wrong and how they can improve. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation:

FrancescaBW: Should business schools take any responsibility for the economic crisis? Why or why not?

RakeshKhurana: That is an important question. As you wrote in your article, I think the answer is not black and white. It is more nuanced. Business education is part of the business system. Consequently, as part of the business system, it plays a role in producing both ideas and individuals inculcated with those ideas for business. It is also influenced by business practice and influences business practices. Consequently, I think it is an important portal from which to examine what happened in recent years with respect to the economy.

FrancescaBW: Do you think professionalizing the MBA is the right move to make? If so, will it ever happen?

RakeshKhurana: I do think moving toward some type of professionalization is important. Indeed, if business schools are not professional schools, what are they? The only choice left is a vocational school. If we are vocational schools, there is really little reason to have business schools in the university. The goal of a university is to produce value for society. Professional schools, in particular, have a role for producing individuals who will act as guardians of society's interests. If that is not a role business schools are willing to take then I think we have important existential and structural issues.

The roots of business schools are in professionalizing management. Indeed, the modern university-based business school arose at a time when there were numerous questions about the role of business in society and whether large corporations could be trusted to operate in a way that was consistent with broader societal objectives. So, I think professionalization is in our DNA.

I do think there are three areas where business schools have to improve. First, there is no longer any agreement about what constitutes a business education. Take the MBA, for example. How long should an MBA take? What are the core courses? How do we certify whether people actually mastered the knowledge they were supposed to have learned? Right now, business schools do not have good answers for these questions. There are heterogeneous programs. Many business schools (including elite schools) have moved away from a core curriculum. Can you imagine medical or law school not knowing what to teach?

Second, business schools need to inculcate students with a sense that there is a commitment to use the knowledge they acquire for advancing the interests of the institutions they are charged with leading, rather than self-interest alone.

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