Links for 11/23/10

David Glenn

Who should teach the nation's business students: scholars with research doctorates, or M.B.A.'s who have worked in business but have little academic grounding?

A current accreditation standard that, in essence, calls for half of the faculty at business schools to hold Ph.D.'s has long been a point of contention. Now the debate is heating up again…
the standard has also been criticized on three grounds. First, skeptics say that the rule has led business schools too far away from the practical professional skills that students require. Second, they say that the rule (together with a related AACSB standard that expects every faculty member to produce "intellectual contributions") has led to a proliferation of low-quality journals that few people read. Finally, skeptics note that there simply aren't that many people with doctorates who want to teach business…

The accreditor's emphasis on academic prestige and disciplinary research, Mr. O'Toole says, "neglects what I believe our primary task should be, which is preparing the next generation of managers and business leaders."…

Robert Martin

the commercialization hypothesis has been accepted, often without critical thought, by many members of the academy. They are not big fans of the business community to begin with, and it is convenient to assume our problems come from “outside agitators” like intrusive business people.

We in higher education do have major problems with cost and quality, and they need fixing. But commercial forces are not the problem – our own internal practices are...

Eric A. Hanushek on value-added

I see valid arguments on both sides.

That having been said, there has been little movement toward a more thorough evaluation system that incorporates broader measurement of teacher effectiveness. The union position is to argue that we need to develop reliable and accurate evaluation systems – but then to block any use of evaluation systems that focus on classroom performance…

I personally would not like to see personnel decisions made solely on the basis of value-added scores. But typical evaluations today are useless, because only a minuscule number of teachers are rated anything but great and because these ratings are never used in making personnel decisions…

The importance of improving our schools is too great simply to dismiss such information as imperfect. The current system of evaluations is completely broken. And, there is virtually no chance of improving schools without paying attention to which teachers are effective and which are ineffective.

Dean Dad

several reasons why we seem to be stuck in permanent austerity mode…

First, there's the basic open-endedness of mission. How much education is enough?...

With a mission like “meeting the educational and workforce needs of the area,” though, it's hard to say how much is enough. In practice, we tend to let the budget set the definition of enough…

Third, we've defined what we do in a way that defeats productivity improvements. We measure learning in units of time… Add seniority-driven raises to lifetime tenure to the lack of mandatory retirement, and you have a perfect inflationary spiral. Any industry without productivity improvements is in for a world of economic hurt sooner or later.