Of Business Schools

I’m not exactly sure what to feel about Business Schools in general, but most would conjure images of happy, carefree, 3-day study week students hanging out at movie theatres when their engineering counterparts are slogging away in school. Students who have had enough of Science-based education, ‘A’ level graduates who are absolutely clueless on what to do in university and the gullibles who are sold on a course with hunks and babes all jump on the business bandwagon. All is good and well, but what exactly is the focus of business schools?

Being the time of the year again, universities are once again aggressively promoting themselves to prospective undergrads with full page advertisements, MRT posters and what not. Notably, NUS Business School (NUSBS) has been particularly aggressive this year, putting up full page advertisements with arbitrary charts and figures in an attempt to downplay their competitors. I saw an advertisement by NUSBS on Today that showcased what was probably their finest graduates; a Manager at KPMG, a Wealth Management Associate at Citigroup, a Product Manager at Maybank, a System Analyst at Prudential and a Research Analyst at Euromonitor International. SMU, for another instance, takes pride in that all their graduates land themselves a job within 6 months, with more half securing one before graduation (TODAY, February 17 2005). Sure, many of them work for big MNCs and probably draw a large paycheck, but is that all that is to business education?

“In America, if you work for a large company for a long time, people ask why. In Singapore, if people leave a large company, people ask why. This is a huge difference.” – Guy Kawasaki

To be fair to these schools, there are evidently a handful of enterprising students out there that had ventured out of their comfort zone and challenged the traditional notion of a successful career – the white-collar worker that works from 9 to 5, draws a handsome paycheck and drives a company car. Unfortunately, few must have been able to make it big enough to be recognised and mentioned by their alma maters in their recruitment efforts to attract prospective business students.

“As I look out before me today, I don’t see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don’t see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers. What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser cum laude.” – Alleged commencement address given by Larry Ellison to Yale’s Class of 2000 Full Transcript

Business schools need to rethink and reinvent themselves. Are they proud of merely churning out first-class honours graduates that will eventually have their paychecks signed by former classmates that have dropped out of university? Are they doing enough to encourage entrepreneurial activities within their students or are they satisfied with featuring their graduates in stable white-collar jobs? Should our efforts in promoting entrepreneurship stop at a superficial level of business plan competitions? Granted, while the idea of the inculcating entrepreneurship in Singaporeans might sound as quixotic as running campaigns for courteous driving, the current climate of business school is aggravating and perpetuating the very problem that it ought to solve.