Jim Clawson's Blog on Leadership & Career Management

The financial events of recent weeks - which saw the dissolution of Lehman Brothers, absorption of Merrill Lynch, saving AIG, and related events - were compared with the fall of 1929. By any measure, these events are catastrophic and far-reaching consequences. My concern is that they too are unlikely to be discussed in business school curricula.

The main business schools rather intense curriculum development, which usually include basic courses in finance, marketing, operations, decision analysis, accounting, economics, strategy, management, and, perhaps, ethics and management communications. Coursework in these courses may or may not be agreed upon, but even if they are, of course designers often assign readings and cases that create a huge amount of material on a daily basis. Students learn to say "drink from a fire hose." The volume and severity of these combined tasks, ironically, as a rule, students of the disc from some of the activities that are necessary for their long-term professional success, health and welfare.

One of the victims are often in step with the business media. When students are in class for five hours a day and prepare for classes the next day after midnight, leaving little time for exercise, family, leisure time reading. Ironically, MBA candidates can go to school and because of their curricula, finding little time to keep up with current developments in the business world.

Some argue that the pressure in the curriculum of business schools to prepare students for an intensive schedule of the working world, where they will have to cut the time of their busy working day to read The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Business Week, Fortune, The Economist, "Far Eastern Economic Review, and so on. Perhaps. I still find it ironic, in places where we want students to learn as much as they can about the business world, we do what we drive them from their stay current and relevant.

One way to fix this would be included in the compulsory program of core courses in business activities. This class can be held once a week in groups of 30 to 60 years. Assignments can read something from the array of media business, or for reading a single source more carefully. Or they may include some directions from time to time to find out everything you can about any issue or company from all sources, including the Internet. Class time will be devoted to discussing the events of the week and what they mean. Students come to class with a variety of information they will share with each other in such a way as to enrich the understanding of each. Students will gain valuable experience calibrating editorial slants of various publications and are beginning to settle on reliable sources. They will be pressed to sift through volumes of data and provide the current and important. More importantly, they would increase their skills in identifying trends and patterns.

I was in two institutions where such courses were offered and both were rejected as not being strict, is not academic, as well as too personal (as opposed to learning to run the business). The argument goes that in the same way that we are not going to teach a course in Personal Finance, we do not have to teach a course on current events business. Students should, detractors say, do it on your own.

The problem is, they are not, mainly because of the volume and structure of our essential programs.

The student first year said today that his peers in other schools, writing and Texting ask each other about the conversations that were or were not, due to the current financial crisis. Interestingly, the review of this survey will be visible. In one school, students have been lobbying the administration created a discussion forum. If a group of students to lobby at the Department created the group to discuss the big business once in a century, the events must be wrong with our educational programs. Perhaps student clubs will be considered discussion. Maybe some teachers would be on an ad hoc basis on the day of the drop material and discuss the most important events. Again, if our regular training programs do not make a place for contributed, they reasoned, active, participatory discussions on current business activities, how can we say, a graduate of the people who know what they are doing? Master of Business Administration, in my opinion, reading is designed to Keep-Up the habit by the time they graduate and do not develop it in the workplace.