Redefining Executive Education

By John S. DeMott

A new corps of business-school deans takes charge

As America's business-school students head to class this fall, they are being greeted by an extraordinarily large number of new deans. More than 100 schools, including Wharton, the University of California at Berkeley and Carnegie-Mellon, have installed new directors, many of whom intend to change curriculums and set new priorities.

Most of the new arrivals are stressing practical, hands-on experience, and quite a few are bringing with them extensive experience in government or major corporations. The emphasis on practicality amounts to a minirevolt against what some deans call a generation of generalists who do not really know how to get down to running businesses or solving problems on the plant floor.

At Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where much of the once mighty American steel industry lies rusting, Business School Dean Elizabeth Bailey, 44, had barely moved into her office before she began looking for ways to stress real business problems instead of mathematical models. Says she: "We want to find practical uses for the models. We don't just want ideas. We want ways to fit those ideas to current industry problems." Bailey also plans to enhance Carnegie-Mellon's program in robotics in order to prepare students for the factory of the future. A member of the Civil Aeronautics Board under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Bailey believes the "stereotypical M.B.A. in a three-piece suit" may be replaced by someone grounded in theory and mechanics who might wear "grease-stained bib overalls."

At the University of Rochester, Paul MacAvoy, 49, a former Yale professor and member of President Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, believes that business-school teaching methods "have lost relevance to the real world." He argues that Harvard's famed case-study approach, in which students examine actual management situations, helped build broad knowledge but little feel for the gritty problems of running a plant. MacAvoy says students too often "get bogged down in the big picture." What is needed, he believes, are not generalists but specialists in fields like capital management. He foresees that as "the hottest topic in business education during the next ten years."

At the business school of the University of California at Berkeley, Raymond E. Miles, 50, is bringing new attention to a subject that in recent years has been almost a dirty word in business schools: manufacturing. Miles is a longtime academic and consultant, but he worked for six years for the Santa Fe Railroad. Says he: "Manufacturing has been a low-status area in many business schools and in most organizations for the past 15 to 20 years. But what's been clearly happening in the last few years has been a re-emphasis on production and production efficiency." Working with the university's department of engineering, Miles is developing a series of courses on managing manufacturing in high-tech industries. The notion is so new to the business-school environment, though, that he is having a hard time finding enough professors to teach the courses, even though he expects the program to be popular among students.

To give students a greater feel for business, Colin Blaydon, 42, formerly a vice provost at Duke University and an expert on energy and regulatory policy, is stepping up the visiting-speaker program at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, the smallest (280 students) and most rural of the better-known schools. The outside lecturers stay in a converted dorm room appropriately called the Executive Suite. They attend classes and share dining-hall meals with students. This year, for example, William Spoor, chief executive of Pillsbury, will give talks on his company's experience as part of a second-year business-policy course.

Russell Palmer, 49, the new dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, this fall took up his first full-time post in academia. Previously he had been a managing partner of Touche Ross, a large accounting firm. Palmer plans to place added emphasis on international business. Says he: "We were used to having things our own way, then all of a sudden we found ourselves competing in global markets and woefully unprepared." Palmer has already put plans in motion for a new international management program.

At Atlanta University's School of Business Administration, which has produced some 30% of America's black M.B.A.s, the new dean is Johnnie Clark, 52. She formerly served as a member of Atlanta's rapid transit authority, and is on the board of the Citizens Trust Bank in Atlanta. Since taking over in July, Clark has been trying to focus more attention on entrepreneurship by offering a course in small-businesss management, an area frequently overlooked.

Not all the fledgling deans agree with the push toward practicality, claiming that it can be narrow and limiting. At the University of Chicago, a major review of the business school's curriculum is scheduled this year, but John Gould, 44, a longtime Chicago business faculty member who took over as dean in July, feels it will favor the classic course of study so that students will learn to take a "broad perspective on business decisions." Educators, says Gould, must "prepare students with general problem-solving ability."

But whatever their approach, all the new deans aim to train graduates with useful knowledge that will last a lifetime. The business schools hope to avoid what Berkeley's Miles calls "training people who are very, very good at solving problems that turn out to be yesterday's problems." -- By John S. DeMott. Reported by Thomas McCarroll/New York, with other bureaus

With reporting by THOMAS McCARROLL This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.