"What's Really Wrong with US Business Schools," by USC's Harry and Linda DeAngelo and the University of Rochester's Jerrold Zimmerman, rebuts the Bennis and O'Toole article in Harvard Business Review.  That article criticizes business schools for over-emphasizing research and placing ivory tower theoreticians  in the classroom as opposed to business practitioners. The DeAngelos and Zimmerman article is summarized in Businessweek's "A Rank Offense to B-Schools?"

I was admittedly unimpressed with the Bennis and O'Toole critique, mainly because I didn't feel they substantiated their allegations well.  I didn't see any statistics showing how many professors lack the kind of experience they feel is so important.  I suspect they didn't include the numbers, because the numbers would show that b-school profs serve on boards, consult, and indeed are heavily involved outside the Academy.  But if someone wants to do a dissertation and prove me wrong, be my guest.

In the DeAngelo and Zimmerman diatribe, I managed to find something to agree with:

"A more reasonable view is that business, like economics, engineering, and journalism, has aspects of both a profession and an academic discipline, and schools must therefore strike a balance between excessive vocationalism, on the one extreme, and pure science, on the other."

But beyond the above truism, I found a lot more wrong with this article than right. First of all the article buys into the b-schools are irrelevant or dysfunctional mantra. If they are so irrelevant why is hiring up? Why have MBA salaries risen? Certainly MBA education can and should be improved, but there is a long road between "can be improved" and "dysfunctional."

In contrast to Bennis and O'Toole the DeAngelos and Zimmerman see the immediate problem as a de-emphasis on research and a turning away from what should be the business school's primary focus: providing a "rigorous conceptual framework." The villain in this loss of focus: The rankings, specifically Businessweek's rankings.

These authors have other gripes:

• Business schools focus too much on full-time MBA programs. (Which is hard to believe because EMBA programs are cash cows and part-time programs have grown in popularity.)
• Shrinking PhD programs.
• An overemphasis on teaching.

The DeAngelos and Zimmerman blame all these alleged signs of dysfunction on the nefarious rankings and the schools' shameless pandering to them.

I agree with the authors that the rankings do encourage short-term thinking on the part of the schools and that thinking can be dysfunctional. Frankly, on occasion so do grades in schools, incentives on the job, share value in management, and the welfare system. But we are not getting rid of any of them.  In fact,  customer satisfaction surveys, and that is what some rankings are, especially the BW rankings, can also lead to a short-term focus, should we ban reviews, Consumer Reports, and JD Powers?

The authors seem to feel that consumer satisfaction, ie the satisfaction of students, alumni, and employers, is irrelevant and should not influence b-school policy. I would hate to invest in a company that had that attitude towards its customers.

There's a lot more to disagree with here, but this post is getting too long.

I am tired of the academic establishment blaming the rankings for everything that ails them while touting their school's ranking when it does well. Take a little responsibility. Create a forum, perhaps through GMAC, that provides better data than the media. Provide ROI stats for 3, 5, 10, and 15 years after graduation, and perhaps adjust for different industries and career paths so that schools with more graduates going into NFP work are not penalized. Don't withhold information, provide more data. But stop whining about consumer access to certain information.

Then have a little backbone. Don't chase every  intellectual fad (See the articles pouring out of academia during the dot-com craze.) Don't over-emphasize the rankings, but recognize they do reflect what is important to your constituents and that you need to balance your customers' short-term needs with the long-term mission of a top-notch business school.