North American and European Models for Business Education

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Business schools across the globe have considerable similarities in curriculum design and courses taught. One reason could be that global businesses call for strong common threads in how accounting, finance, marketing and the other business fields are covered, or that the course materials are produced in a global publishing regime that has few boundaries, or even that most professors have similar training and there is significant communication between professors in a field.

One of the big areas of difference across regions is in the sources of revenues. Top North American schools have significant annual gifts and endowment incomes and high tuitions. North American state-supported schools also get government subsidies, and they too have moved to higher tuitions. European schools have a few examples where revenue sources are similar to North American top schools, but most are largely state supported, with annual giving, endowment income and tuition currently making up a smaller percentage.

Another area of considerable difference is in faculty focus, where most top North American schools' professors aim their research at scholarly journals and they are rewarded for refereed publications. In other parts of the world, there seems to be more emphasis on publications that are accessible to a wider practitioner audience.

I don't believe that the North American faculty model will change much any time soon, though economic pressures seem to demand at many schools the adding of adjunct faculty who do not do as much primary research. I think that most of the growth in management education will come from outside of North America, and I predict that those schools will employ fewer PhD's and more adjuncts, primarily based on cost considerations but also to achieve what is believed to be a more practical set of offerings.

Interesting questions for future discussion are: “What is the relationship between cutting edge research and relevant courses?” “Will faculty prestige continue to be identified with refereed publications?”

Comments

[José Mario]

Cutting edge scientific research is something that helps us to discover the laws behind the scene and to build new useful products trough his application. It is done trough deep contact with the field of study. While researching electrons or monkeys, we must get in touch with the subjects of study. Can research at many business schools be defined in this way? Or, perhaps, for some professors is primarily a way of socialization between peers. A way to create barriers, in the competition for tenure and funding.

Inside companies, research is a competitive advantage leading to new product and services development. And researchers, from basic to applied, are devoted to this objective. For some business schools professors, this is inadequate. They don’t want to align his/her research neither with school goals nor with real managers needs. If faculty prestige continues to be identified with refereed publications, some schools will end without any prestige.