Recently, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released a report that argues universities will develop better business professionals if more liberal arts education is integrated into business school curriculums. The report, Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession, argues that business schools are too separated from other departments on college campuses. It claims that students are not thinking critically in undergraduate courses, which can have detrimental effects as they begin to engage with the business world.
Although this report might not have a sound methodology, it serves as an important reminder that a degree is not equivalent to an education. The authors discuss a “barbell approach” in which students study liberal arts as prerequisites to business fields, but are unable to make the connections between the two. At many universities, this is true. The business school is generally an entirely separate entity from the liberal arts programs, and interdisciplinary collaboration is becoming exceedingly rare. Fortunately, there are still examples such as the Center for International Ethics at the University of Kansas that still value the intersection of liberal arts and business.
The report comes at an troubling time for undergraduate business education. Business majors spend less time preparing for class than do students in any other broad field according to a National Survey of Student Engagement. In “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that when business majors took the GMAT (the entrance exam for graduate school), they scored lower than students in every other major. Despite the poor record, business is without question the most popular field of study among college undergraduates. Accounting, marketing, finance, management, and business administration accounts for over 20% of all bachelor’s degrees given annually in the United States.
At the end of the day, improving your critical thinking, reasoning, and communication skills, is just as important as your major. I would argue that learning how to learn is more crucial that becoming an excellent memorizer.
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