What research teaches us
Spending big money on research is worth every penny
Apr, 2010
How much does it cost to educate an MBA student? I'm guessing that most people would try to answer this question by looking at what schools charge for their MBA programmes. However, the reality is quite different.
Business schools are costly operations to run. It might not seem so hard to assemble a group of subjects, teach them - using practitioners who are relatively cheap to hire - and call it an MBA. But that will not result in a first-class experience. Students expect a career service - they want to have help finding a job or making a transition through their career.
They also expect great teachers who are good communicators - the kind of people whom they actually want to drag themselves out on a cold morning to go and hear. They expect good facilities and great service. Finally, they expect an extracurricular life that gives them opportunities to hear from business leaders and thinkers and interact with former students and their peers.
What many students do not factor into the cost of their education is the cost of the research a business school undertakes. And as a dean I can tell you that good research is expensive.
Many of the top schools charge more than £66,000 (approx $109,000AUD) in tuition fees for their MBA. However, to fund annual operations, including the research that is produced by faculty members, these schools typically also need an endowment that provides anywhere from a third to a half of total operating expenses.
Sometimes students ask me why research is necessary, and why we pay high salaries to great teachers who are also great researchers. The simple answer is that active researchers make better teachers. They tend to be more up to date, more engaged in their subject matter and continually inquiring about whether there are better ways to do things.
All that makes for a more exciting and engaging classroom.
Good faculty members who are able to combine research that has impact with teaching that excites are extraordinarily scarce and are sought by schools around the world.
Students should value teachers who engage in original research because their teaching will be based not on anecdote and opinion but on evidence. Research gathers the evidence that leads to sound decisions about management practice.
For hundreds of years doctors did all sorts of things to patients, many of them quite harmful, and resented being told by scientists that their practices were wrong.
Now evidence-based medicine is taken for granted. We expect to have extensive, properly conducted trials before introducing a new drug or treatment. Perhaps management is currently where medicine was 200 years ago.
The kind of research business schools should be doing is bold and looks to have a long-term effect on the practice of business. It is sophisticated in its approach to problems and rigorous in its analysis. Business schools should be teaching managers how to understand research and how to implement it - just as doctors are now taught how to read research papers and use them to introduce evidence-based treatments.
This kind of education is difficult to popularise when students want quick, implementable advice about what to do in their company tomorrow.
Professors who tell war stories will be rated higher by students than professors who make students read or conduct applied research. And yet businesses continue to make billion-dollar mistakes even though mountains of evidence exist that would have led to different decisions.
If we want to make a difference to the world of business, we need to persuade that world that business research is important; that understanding business research will make for better executives; that business research leads to higher profits.
We need education that teaches students to be informed creators and users of research, transforming the business world into an educated community of professionals.
This is my challenge as a dean: to fund research that will have an impact and then to teach our students to implement it.
Jennifer George is Dean and Director at Melbourne Business School
First published in The Times Online (UK)
