Vice-Chairman General Motors
Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.
The most dignifying and self-rewarding task that we, as educators, can engage in is dealing with the students in the learning process, particularly through teaching in class. Teaching has been at the core of education and the essence of academic work since its origins, something reinforced by the etymology of the word "academia". Every time we read Plato’s dialogues we rejoice at learning his and Socrates’ thoughts through the discussions between the master and his students. I do not mean that other scholarly activities are not necessary, even indispensable, for the correct performance of an academic job; we have discussed this here before. But teaching seems pivotal to the others. It is then surprising, if not disheartening, that sometimes academics may loose this track.
I have found one of the most recent interesting pieces of analysis on American higher education in an article entitled "The Truth About the Colleges", written by Andrew Hacker and published in the New York Review of Books last week.
The author comments on recent literature on university education and concludes that "all the books under review voice a similar lament: too many professors, perhaps most, are doing a mediocre job in the classroom". One of the books covered by the article is the latest report produced by the Princeton Review: "The Best 357 Colleges: 2005 Edition". An interesting finding of this survey is that undergraduates show a higher degree of satisfaction, regarding teaching performance, in colleges that have small enrolments, that do not have graduate programmes and that do not enjoy a wide national reputation. Surprisingly, the lowest scores in the survey were obtained by undergraduate instruction at large, well-known research universities. Another source mentioned in Hacker’s article is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, according to which seven out of eight undergraduates study in campuses "where the work of devoted teachers is rarely rewarded, and prestige and high salaries are conferred on professors who concentrate on their research, graduate seminars, publications, and reputations". Hacker goes on further and quotes Stanley Katz, a professor of public affairs at Princeton, who says that many universities "are dominated by faculties for whom thoughtful consideration of undergraduate education is simply not on the agenda". The author concludes with the devastating statement: "As matters stand, one measure of a university's prestige is how little teaching is asked of its tenured professors. Although there are more endowed chairs at the top, more undergraduates are now taught by graduate assistants, adjuncts, and part-time faculty who will never be promoted."
Teaching matters a lot. I believe that in management education we may be better prepared to avoid the undesirable syndrome described above. At most business schools I’ve visited, teaching performance is one of the key variables used in the selection and promotion of professors. It certainly becomes decisive for the assignment of docents in executive education programmes. If we aim at achieving our mission, we need to enhance the teaching skills of our professors in order that they become true academics in class.
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