Question
Asked 14 September 2017
Despite the evidence of academic incompetence, is restoring trust really possible?
In a survey of 5,000 MBA students, for example, more than half acknowledged that they cheat. Yet only one in twenty, or five percent, of the Deans of the top 100 US Business Schools thought they "might have an academic integrity problem." Moreover, top scholars like Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford and Henry Mintzberg of McGill University have described business school MBAs as largely irrelevant and too focused on analysis rather than on people. Finally, despite the fact that more than half of the US population under 18 is now non-Caucasian, American universities have consistently failed to train American-born minorities in doctoral programs -- such as business -- where a 2006 report indicated that 53% of doctoral candidates are minorities but only 5% are Native Americans, American-born Hispanic, or American-born Blacks. . . and the problem is only getting worse.
Most recent answer
Nikola:
The Chronicle of Higher Education has also recently published a new book on the value of academic degrees. Perhaps that document will also be of value to you.
Academia has to change. Colleges and universities in the US (and other countries as well) have resorted to hiring adjuncts who typically lack doctoral degrees or maintain their level of cutting edge knowledge by publishing. -- typically because the states and federal government have decreased funding for universities and well-qualified faculty are "too expensive." But hiring adjuncts is "bass ackwards" and a foolish short-term fix.
The funding of US colleges and universities needs to expand exponentially -- but those same schools and their faculties and administrations must become more relevant and more accountable. But, as institutional theory suggests, those same schools and their leaders feel no pressure to change -- even when the hand writing is on the wall about the difficult times facing the world we are passing on to our children and grandchildren.
Leaders in academia must become more entrepreneurial, more practical, and more creative -- as well as more cutting-edge, more participative, and more accountable to a public that desperately needs them to raise the bar. But it's a bar we MUST ALL RAISE TOGETHER!
Cam
All Answers (6)
Towson University
I believe our new book addresses all of these issues, and more, with the exception of explicitly discussing the cheating issue. I am confident that a reinvention of the curriculum would address that, too, as I have only a handful of cheating incidents in my 25 years of teaching several thousand students myself.
Aneil:
I know your work well and have great regard for you. I wish I could believe in the quality of academic integrity among administrators. There are so few like Robert Quinn and Kim Cameron for whom I have so much respect.
As a new instructor at a "Top 50" business school, I was appalled when my department chair told the faculty to focus on their publications and not worry about their teaching quality. By the way, I led the entire school in Top 45 pubs and in all pubs overall that same year -- and then the school discontinued teaching business ethics (which I was hired to teach). Oh . . . that same department head (who is now Dean at another school) told me, "Make it go away" when I told him I caught four MBA students plagiarizing an assignment.
So . . . you see, I just have less optimism than you have. And that school had no Blacks, Hispanics, or even women in their Management Department's doctoral program and I had only three Blacks out of 200 students in the four classes I taught. . . . although their athletic teams are primarily African-American.
Cam
Aneil:
Here are more examples:
1) At one school the VP of Finance would not provide our Dean of Business (who had been Under Secretary of Commerce) with the budget information for his department -- despite the fact that the university claimed it was too poor to properly pay its faculty and expected the Dean to generate new students without authorizing the resources necessary to actually do that! And the University President knew that was how the VP of Finance treated ALL its department heads. How foolish is that?
2) That same school brought me in to create a doctoral program in business. I developed a proposal to do that very thing and offered to guarantee that it would generate $100,000 plus in first year new net revenues -- yet the proposal was turned down.
3) Faculty at that same school (who average 65 years of age or more) do not publish and refuse to do so -- and the Dean who was hired to upgrade the School of Business eventually resigned in frustration after dealing with these folks . . . who resented the fact that they were asked to do more than just teach the same things they had been teaching year after year.
4) I was hired to help another school create an AACSB accredited business program by a wonderful Chancellor. Unfortunately, I was hired in August and he retired in September -- and along with his retirement went the Department Chair and Vice Chancellor's support for the program -- which, a decade later, still does not even have ACBSP certification (even though they pay their non-publishing business faculty excellent salaries).
5) When I attended my son's graduation at a top Texas university, the group of two colleges graduated a total of 66 PhDs -- and 61 of the 66 were from foreign countries while American minorities are not given the opportunity. This pattern recurs often, despite the fact that our minority youth desperately need role models of their own ethnic background and our US education system ranks 17th in the world in a knowledge-, wisdom-, and information-based economy.
I wish what you were hoping for was true. May the Good Lord help us, it needs to be true! But it isn't, . . in my experience.
Cam
Aneil:
Academic institutions have been widely criticized for being irrelevant, out of touch, and impractical. Enclosed is a link to an article I wrote for the Graziadio Business Review (the business journal at Pepperdine). It identifies why academics MUST become partners with the real world.
Also attached are three related papers associated with the focus of your research. . . . including an interview with Henry Mintzberg who opined that most of the papers published in top-tier business research journals fail to pass muster in having practical value.
I served on the Academy of Management's task force to revise its Code of Ethics and edited a special edition of the Journal of Academic Ethics on "Ethical Responsibilities of Business Programs." I also served on its Ethics Education Committee (EEC) and was its online Ethics Editor for two years. The focus of the EEC was on self-plagiarism and how to avoid being academically dishonest -- despite the fact that we live in a world that Princeton's David Callahan labeled "The Cheating Culture" in a book by that title.
Do we deserve as academic administrators, deans, and scholars to be taken seriously? We need to demonstrate that we add value . . . . much as the Academy of Management's outgoing president once advocated in his farewell address asking, "What if the Academy of Management really mattered?"
My apologies to other disciplines for my Business School focus . . . . but I see the problem through my personal experiences . . . and the question of academic relevance of universities is so important across the board!
Cam
Dear Cam Caldwell,
this is an interesting and in-depth study. I will get ideas for the education of Roma / Gypsies in universities.
Thank you very much!
Best regards,
Nikola Benin
2 Recommendations
Nikola:
The Chronicle of Higher Education has also recently published a new book on the value of academic degrees. Perhaps that document will also be of value to you.
Academia has to change. Colleges and universities in the US (and other countries as well) have resorted to hiring adjuncts who typically lack doctoral degrees or maintain their level of cutting edge knowledge by publishing. -- typically because the states and federal government have decreased funding for universities and well-qualified faculty are "too expensive." But hiring adjuncts is "bass ackwards" and a foolish short-term fix.
The funding of US colleges and universities needs to expand exponentially -- but those same schools and their faculties and administrations must become more relevant and more accountable. But, as institutional theory suggests, those same schools and their leaders feel no pressure to change -- even when the hand writing is on the wall about the difficult times facing the world we are passing on to our children and grandchildren.
Leaders in academia must become more entrepreneurial, more practical, and more creative -- as well as more cutting-edge, more participative, and more accountable to a public that desperately needs them to raise the bar. But it's a bar we MUST ALL RAISE TOGETHER!
Cam
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