"Visions of World Benefit & Global Responsibility: Perspectives of McGill Students


Friday, August 3, 2007

The Future of Management Education

Having been in business school for three years already, I have not learnt a thing about real-life management. Most of my classes are focused on exams and have not encouraged critical thinking or research. In addition, they fail to deliver the true meaning of business: practice. In traditional fields, such as the humanities and sciences, university studies seek gaining knowledge and examine theories for this purpose. Nevertheless, in study fields such as management, it is important to forget theory and focus on experience. For this reason, I suggest (and hope) that, in the next few years, management instructors decide to pursue a more practical and “how-to” approach.

My ideal management class would have minimal theoretical content as possible and not only deliver expertise through cases, but also through field projects. For instance, teach us how to conduct a real market research for a real company in market research class, or a complete financial analysis for a real company in a corporate finance course, and, most importantly, a business plan for a real company in strategy class. In other words, the perfect management course would involve an active class discussion on crucial topics and diverse business cases, in addition to completing a substantial project in a relevant field, always examining real companies. It is essential to exclude exams… they are pretty much useless in business formation!

1 comment:

The Double-U Show said...

you're right. real-life management is the only way to prepare people. You can learn all you want in school, but overall the experience with people is where it matters most. I'm in criminal justice graduate school and it's painfully obvious that none of the instructors have any real experience in the CJ system and the practice and theoretical component are not always congruent.

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