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Business education is one of the great successes of the modern world. That success wasn't particularly easy to foresee, however. In 1907, when asked to consider developing a business school, Harvard president Charles William Eliot said, "There's no market for it." Nearly a century later, the statistics prove him wrong. Today, more than 200,000 MBAs are awarded annual- ly, making the MBA the world's most popular graduate degree. In 1998, 24 percent of all master's degrees award- ed were in business. Undergraduate business education dwarfs MBA production, with more than a million under- graduates enrolled in American business schools each year. In 2001, 92 percent of accredited colleges and universities offered an undergraduate business program. In addition, executive education has become a highly profitable busi- ness, especially for branded schools, offering businesspeo- ple the cachet of a top-tier MBA without the typical aca- demic prerequisites. Despite the fact that business degrees offer substantive value—more steak than sizzle, so to speak—business edu- cation has come under attack by a variety of critics with a wide range of charges, from questions about its academic purity to doubts about its value. It's time that business educators and business graduates started vigorously refut- ing these charges and taking every opportunity to point out the profound effect management education has had on the business world. Management educators need to examine the specific accusations leveled at business schools and be prepared with effective counterclaims. While some of these accusa- tions are not recent, they are still widely cited, and I believe they need to be directly and immediately addressed. all; their degrees may be in psychology, mathematics, or philosophy. Conversely, few liberal arts professors have taken business courses or obtained business degrees, and many have little or no work experience outside the univer- sity. Therefore, these liberal arts faculty might have a lim- ited ability to judge the value of a business degree in a real- world work situation. Aphilosophy professor once claimed that business education "sucks undergraduate students dry of ideal- ism." In fact, the liberal arts foundation may be the source of that lost idealism. Students who should have learned writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills in Commercial success, which business schools promote, violates the standards of liberal education. In fact, business education is usually rooted in a liberal arts education. Many business faculty have significant liberal arts expo- sure, if not a degree in liberal arts. Some business faculty have no business training at edge of liberal arts, is an excellent start for someone who wants to become a global leader. Undergraduate business schools that follow the highest level of accreditation require that their students complete at least half of their degrees outside of business courses. As a result, business students as well as business faculty are familiar with a gen- eral liberal arts education, which prepares them for a career in the 21st century. I am less sure that a liberal arts education that does not contain a professional component such as business education really prepares students for jobs after graduation or even for lifelong learning. their general education courses often do not master these skills until they've moved on to the business school cur- riculum. Worse, liberal arts courses sometimes teach stu- dents to loathe business and to accept guilt for the ethi- cal lapses in corporations. I believe a formal education, including a broad knowl- Business schools rely too heavily on the corporate world for support. Columnist Robert Samuelson has criticized corporations for hiring business schools to train their junior executives. He believes that business schools have "subtly permitted many companies to shift responsibility to outsiders for selecting and training managers." But I believe the close relationship between corporations and business schools is a strength, not a weakness. Business schools prepare students to practice business, so it's only right that they often have the financial backing of corporations that endow chairs and contribute funds to the construction of new facilities. Business schools have failed to cure all of the world's economic and business problems while causing many of the world's ethical and moral problems. To the first half of that statement, I would reply: Are business schools to be credited or blamed for a country's economic progress? Obviously not. Samuelson claimed in 1990 that "the MBA explosion has coincided with the deterioration in the performance and stature of corporate America." To that, I would point out that America's strong GDP growth over the past 50 years coincided with the growth of MBA programs. While some indicators sug- gest that American global competitiveness declined between 1945 and 1990, most of that decline can be attributed to the revival of post-war economies and the rise of Third World nations—who benefited from American business expertise. To the second half of the statement, I would say: Business schools certainly have a responsibility to teach the ramifications of unethical corporate behavior and the BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2004 41