The Tragedy of SA Business Schools

Business Schools have become victims of their own success in this generation that they have lost the principles of their founding missions; "to educate practitioners and create knowledge through research". Large business schools in South Africa are such huge brands that they have become exclusive clubs for the privileged few in the country.

Where have the wheels fallen off?

Two key trends come to the fore in this regard;

1) Excessive cost of business schools (MBAs etc.)

2) Content that has not evolved with the times.

I believe the above two issues are key trends that urgently need attention.

1) The cost of a business school education in South Africa is absurd and deliberately set to create an exclusive club of elitists who then network and under these big brands to retain the status quo.

The top business schools all charge over R200k for an MBA with one getting close to R400k, in terms of fees and ancillary payments required to attain the MBA. Surely for a country where the average income in the country is R17387 per month, these schools are excluding the majority of this country and denying them opportunities to gain skills and develop the country.

The recent "#fees must fall campaign" is a manifestation of these inequalities in which being poor excludes you from the top business schools. This legitimate campaign highlights fundamental structural issues that the country is faced with; education should be a right and not a privilege.

The statistics indicate that the majority of MBA students in South Africa are in their late 30s to 40s yet in Western countries far much younger students have access to Business Schools.

When you empower the young with technical business skills the nation stands a much better chance to innovate and create entrepreneurs. How can someone in his 40s with a business school qualification, married with 2 or 3 kids, mortgage bond, vehicle finance and stable job, risk it all to become an entrepreneur?

Surely these fees need to come down, and one way is to embrace technology in the country and offer online programmes, government needs to open up the sector and allow foreign institutions with knowledge and experience in Online learning to set up shop (or partnerships with local institutions) and give these traditional institutions a wakeup call and some competition. This would make business sense for foreign universities as Africa has some of the fastest growing economies and a very large young population.

We could also consider not for profit universities whose mandate is skilling the population and grounded in actual business practices.

2) The content is still based on the discipline approach that is of a scientific rigour with case studies, discussions and assignments being the cornerstones to the teachings.

The lecturers are experts who produce volumes of research in peer journals that no manager will ever see or hear of.

It is strange that in medicine we expect a Professor not only to teach medical students all the medical procedures and operations but to have themselves performed them; this is what makes the medical profession to be acceptable and professional. Yet in business it is acceptable for the business school professor (expert) to never have set foot in a business except as a customer but to have published volumes of research papers that no manager has ever seen/read.

Business schools need to strike a balance in the curriculum between soft skills and technical skills. Managers operate in an uncertain manner without full information they need to be able to lead and bring out the best from their people and make decisions with limited information.

The curriculum should strengthen and ensure compulsory status on the following modules over and above the traditional technical disciplines of Accounting &Finance, Economics, Marketing and Strategy:

    Leadership
    Ethics, governance and morality
    Entrepreneurship/
    Disruptive innovation
    Psychology
    Basic IT skills
    Social media in business

The argument here is for a multi-disciplinary approach that understands that in this new world order business schools cannot function in the old discipline and scientific approach.

Soft skills have become vital in understanding and managing today's challenges.

As a people leaving in a digital era, it is important that IT skills be added to the business schools programmes. Virtual all business functions now have a major IT component in the core and it is imperative that managers have a basic understanding of IT issues to enable them to effectively manage this critical resource in the 21st century.

I conclude by quoting the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead's 1927 address to the American Association of the Collegiate Schools of Business:

"Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts: It is a way of illuminating the facts the tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations".