In pursuit of relevance

After a decade of chequered performance, can the SA Business Schools’ Association (Sabsa) finally offer the common purpose that the local business schools sector needs?

Deans hope this year’s appointment of US-born businessman Millard Arnold as Sabsa’s first executive director will kickstart the organisation into becoming more relevant and end the perception of a themand-us relationship between major university schools and the rest.

The Business Schools Partner Network, an association created to lobby for the needs of smaller schools, has closed down as its members expect the new-look Sabsa to promote the needs of all. Cobus Oosthuizen, dean of the privately owned Milpark Business School, says: “Relationships are improving. There is no longer the sense that the private okes are somehow inferior.”

Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) dean Nicola Kleyn says: “It’s important to have a body that is representative of all schools, particularly when fostering engagement with government.”

Owen Skae, director of Rhodes University Business School and Sabsa’s current president, says the body’s priority is to market the business schools sector. Before Arnold’s appointment, Sabsa officials were often too busy with their own schools to lobby and speak on behalf of others.

Consequently, national education bodies like the Council on Higher Education (CHE), which oversees the business schools sector, have sometimes limited their contact with Sabsa. Even now, says Wits Business School director Steve Bluen, some officials prefer to talk to schools’ parent universities.

Despite asserting that, in the past, Sabsa “punched above its weight”, Arnold says the rest of the world underestimates the edu-