The Future of Ed. Schools

Five Lessons From Business Schools

By Robert Maranto, Gary Ritter, & Arthur E. Levine

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently urged the nation’s schools of education to pursue reforms, and particularly to strengthen their teacher-preparation programs. Could the recent history of business schools offer a future for schools of education?

As the management scholar William G. Ouchi pointed out in his 1985 essay “Reflections on Management Education,” from 1961 to 1981 the percentage of undergraduate degrees awarded in business administration nearly doubled (from 13 percent to 22 percent). M.B.A.s more than tripled their market share, from 6 percent to 22 percent. By the 1980s, business schools had become “the largest single component of the modern academy.”

Less noticed was a quantum leap in the quality of the degree, particularly remarkable since the easiest way to grow in quantity is to shrink in quality. In the 1950s, business schools were seen as places for marginal students to skate by, and for privileged students to network into future careers. Yet by the 1980s, business schools were training many of the best and the brightest, and became more prominent...