Research | - "How should we train our PhDs?"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

In response to Dean Ininguez's entry on PhD programs, I agree wholeheartedly that professors must be skilled and dedicated teachers in addition to striving to push back the frontiers of knowledge in their fields.  One very complicated factor I have seen at many schools is the question of whether each and every faculty should be committed to dual excellence or should some specialize in teaching and others specialize in research?

Because top researchers are so rare and expensive to support, I would say that some may not be particularly devoted to MBA teaching but the majority who do teach MBA or other professional courses should be both excellent researchers and excellent teachers.  Most  of the top PhD programs do a small amount in the way of training teachers, primarily by  giving opportunities to teach a course or two or by being a teaching assistant, but they spend the vast majority of the program doing a fabulous job of training researchers. 

We should probably have a post-doctoral period where young PhD graduates could both hone their research skills and also really dig into both the theory and practice of good teaching.  The current system, is primarily "on-the-job" training where the  pressures and the stakes are very high.  This is probably not best for student learning. 

We need to also look at the other side of the imbalance, which is perhaps even more important.  There are so many non-researchers who teach a high percentage of the courses in some business schools and ideally they should get more training in interpreting high-quality research.  As I have said in other entries in this blog, the best teaching in MBA programs is done by those who are both cutting edge thought leaders and dedicated teachers.  In a world where perhaps as many as 30-40% or more of some programs are being taught by non-PhD's who do do necessarily follow the latest research findings, perhaps a concerted effort is needed to make them conversant with leading edge thinking.  Of course, they along with their PhD colleagues are not necessarily trained in good pedagogy. 

Comments

[Fernando Jimenez]

El eterno problema de la investigación,investigación básica vs aplicada, está vigente y de que manera en el mundo de las escuelas de negocio. En primer lugar señalaré que el requisito imprescindible es que tengan capacidad para saber transmitir sus conocimientos, es decir que sepan enseñar. A partir de ahí debemos pensar en los Phd no como individuos aislados, sino como personas que forman parte de un equipo de investigación y en ese entorno debemos contar con investigadores que profundicen e investigen en áreas de conocimiento básico y puedan aportar al Management la base necesaria para su crecimiento. De esta forma los programas y por ende los alumnos se beneficiarán tanto de la aplicación del conocimiento como del pensamiento de fondo que lleva detrás.

[Enrique Dans]

In my humble opinion, Professor Danos, the problem lies not with the presence or absence of a research profile among faculty members, but with the type of research they pursue. Most professors at busioness schools engage in research lines that are not appropriate for a business school. Given the applied nature of Management as a field, research should be applicable, practical, meaningful to both companies and students. Of course the Management discipline has foundations in other areas such as Mathematics, Psychology, Economics, etc., but if a professor chooses to do research in one of such disciplines instead of doing research in Management, then he or she is probably teaching at the wrong place. The problem, then, is not teaching vs. research, but doing research in topics that are both meaningful and relevant to students and firms. If a rofessor is able to do so, he or she will probably have much less difficulties in conveying the message to his/her students, and thus will achieve higher student evs.